Terminology:) What? Where? How?

(Sep 3 - Sept 12 )

My task during this week is to do reseach about existing block programming languages, read the article called, Predicting quality in educational software: Evaluating for Learning, Usability and the Synergy between them by David Squires and Jenny Preece, and get familiarized with Scratch and Blockly.

Resume of the above mentioned article

Squires and Preece discusse a new approach for teachers to be able to evaluate predictively educational software base on heuristics so that they can make decisions about what software to purchase and how to use software in classrooms. The conventional approach to predictive evaluation is to use a checklist. This article argue that checklists are seriously flawed in principle because they do not encompass a consideration of learning issues and because they fail to adopt a socio-constructivist view of learning. So the article proposes an approach that adapts the idea of usability heuristics by taking account of a socio-constructivist learning perspective. This leads to a set of ‘learning with software’ heuristics. A notable feature of these heuristics is that they attend to the integration of usability and learning issues Any technique used by teachers needs to be relatively quick and easy to use. Heuristic evaluation is designed to address key usability issues in a cost effective way. High level guidelines or heuristics focus reviewers’ attention as they work their way through the system, using their expertise to role-play the behaviour of a typical user. The latest version of usability heuristics published are as follows:

• Visibility of system status:

the system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

• Match between the system and the real world:

the system should speak the user’s language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system oriented terms. Follow real world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

• User control and freedom:

users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked ‘emergency exit’ to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo

• Consistency and standards:

users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.

• Error prevention:

even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place.

• Recognitionratherthanrecall:

make objects actions and options visible. The users should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.

• Flexibility and efficiency of use:

accelerators—unseen by the novice user—may often speed up the interaction for the expert user to such an extent that the system can cater for both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

• Aesthetic and minimalist design:

dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.

• Help users recognise, diagnose, and recover from errors:

error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

• Help and documentation:

even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.