Evaluating Educational Software II

Texts:
Raskin, Jef. The Humane Interface (2001)
Tufte, Edward R. The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (2003)
Humongous Entertainment. Big Thinkers: First Grade (1997)
Children's Television Workshop. Sesame Workshop (2004)

Introduction: Is it a Science or an Art?

"The choices made in the sciences, the forward motion of the collective scientific enterprise, are phenomenologically imposed as those in the sonata or novel are not." George Steiner, Real Presences (155)

Unlike many courses offered in the CS Department, there is long-standing controversy about whether the concepts that are fundamental in CS92 belong properly in the realm of science or to that of art. Whether we are talking about education, teaching, learning, thinking, programming, or interface design, we will find: examples of research/scholarship that argues that we should be using the methods of science to figure out what we can and do know; and still other examples that argue that these phenomena are best investigated through techniques borrowed from the arts. We'll start today's class with an attempt to draw contrasts between thinking about interface design as an art and as a science. Like the moral of the famous Razzles commercial/contest -- is it a gum or a candy? -- we'll find the point of debating the issue isn't to find the right answer but to see what comes of the different interpretations.

Raskin's The Humane Interface, chapters 7 & 8

We'll begin the discussion by looking at Big Thinkers! from the point of view of Raskin's various points in chapters 5 and 6. We'll discuss aspects of the program which seem well-designed as well as those that don't. A recurring question this week will be how analyses of interface design like those in Raskin and Tufte should be understood when teaching is the primary goal of the program, and learning is the experience we want most from the user.

Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

"The spreadsheet is the program that all but created the personal computer. The spreadsheet and the word processor -- two tools empty of information, two little programs sitting patiently and passively for their human owners to put something interesting into them. Now, .. years later, the Internet browser is the program creating the second generation of the personal computer. The browser -- a click-click baby tool for searching the Web, where everything of interest already resides. It is a journey through the looking glass in the age of information: one pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small." Ellen Ullman, from Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents (1997)

Because of the particular projects chosen this semester, our discussion of Tufte may involve issues that don't seriously concern the projects. When we design programs for K-8 instruction, after all, issues of attention, engagement, motivation, and comfort are far more challenging than questions of how to handle the complexities and subtleties of the content. In many cases, the purpose of the program in K-8 is to make learning exciting despite the simplicity of the information/skills to the learned. Tufte's concern, on the other hand, is with problems that come from presenting complex content visually, and specifically using PowerPoint. The quotation from Ellen Ullman (above) suggests something that we should keep in mind even in K-8, however, namely the degree to which interfaces engage and represent the power(s) of the user.

We'll begin with the examples of PowerPoint slides/presentations that support or challenge elements of Tufte's argument, and move on to consider the pamphlet as a (new) sort of criticism modeled on "literary" criticism.

A Quick Word About Storyboards

We'll begin the storyboards next week, and in preparation you might look at some of the storyboards from the CS92 projects of the last few years. Despite our scrutiny of PowerPoint, it is fine if (though certainly not necessary that) you use it, and indeed the goals of the storyboard are:

• To explain the goals of the program.
• To give everyone a sense of the structure of the user experience (to the extent you've worked it out).
• To illustrate the "flow" of the program and the kinds of actions and interactions you wish the program to provide.
• To explain what use you'll make of various modalities and media (e.g. text, sound, images, animations) and why.
• To explain what cognitive and/or literary techniques you'll be employing to facilitate/motivate learning.
• To explain how the design of the program is related to what you know of your audience (to the extent you think you've learned things about the audience).
• To explain how exactly you envision users using the program (i.e. where will they use it, for how long at each session, for how long in their education, etc.), and the criteria you would use to evaluate the success of the program (to the extent that you've worked this out).
• To explain how (if at all) any of the above reflects ideas, or reactions to ideas, we've encountered in the readings this semester.
• To explain the division of labor in the production of the program (to the extent you've worked it out).
• To provoke the sort of reactions/feedback/advice that your team believes will be most useful at this stage of the design process.

For Tuesday: Read: Sherry's Turkle's "How Computers Change the Way We Think" (The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 50 Issue 21, B26, 1/30/04; and Michael Stumpf's "Projecting Information" (Science, Vol 303, Issue 5658, 630 , 30 January 2004). We'll begin the storyboards on Thursday.