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Makale Özeti:
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Revolutionary advancements have been observed in e-learning technologies though an
amalgamated evaluation methodology for new generation e-learning content
development tools is not available. The evaluation of educational software for online use
must consider its usability and as well as its pedagogic effectiveness. This study is a first
step towards the definition of criteria for evaluating e-learning tools. A preliminary user
study involving a group of pre-service instructional designers, observed during their
interaction with e-learning tools, is reported. Throughout the study, specific usability
attributes of these e-learning tools were identified. Participants were assigned to rate
the importance of functional and pedagogical competences proposed during the criteria
development phase. The findings of the study revealed 31 evaluation criteria under the
headings of technical, media, and assessment competences. Among the groups of
benchmarks proposed and rated by the users, assessment was considered as the most
important one while technical and media features were even.The following step was
actual implemention of the usability criteria into evaluation of fifteen leading software
used in e-learning across the world. Mostly, tools were observed as having limitations in
terms of capabilities. Comparing to the other software, Captivate, Softchalk, and Lectora
were regarded as outstanding tools by the participants. Following the discussion on the
limitations of the study, some implications for further research were proposed.
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