Educational software evaluation: A contextual approach

This dissertation concerns itself with the analysis, interpretation, and development of educational-software evaluation models, with a particular attention towards second-language acquisition software. This work first explores the current state of research into educational software and analyzes the relationship of computer-assisted language learning to the general field of educational technology. After exploring the basic nature of software and evaluation, a justification for the research is provided by analyzing the current state of evaluation theory and identifying flaws through a meta-analysis of software reviews over the past twenty years. Secondary literature and academic reception are then analyzed over the same period to identify major trends in evaluation theory. General educational-software evaluation and CALL evaluation theories are analyzed separately to identify the relationship and uniqueness of each field. Due to the great number of individual evaluation theories, this work seeks to establish a classification system for educational-software evaluation by grouping and classifying individual theories by their basic characteristics. After the theories have been grouped and classified for the period ranging over the past twenty years, both CALL and general educational-software evaluation theories are compared to highlight trends shared by both and trends unique to each discipline. The findings are used to establish a new model based on educational context and real-life educational implementation. Finally, the new contextual evaluation theory is applied and the results are analyzed in a small-scale study.