Chapter 2 Reflections on a model for evaluating learning technologies

Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. This chapter discusses an evaluation framework, CIAO!, developed by the Computers and Learning Research Group at the Open University and used to evaluate students' use of technology based teaching and learning on a number of different courses. The framework has been described briefly elsewhere (Jones et. al. 1996) and case studies of its use have also been documented (Scanlon et. al, 1998). This chapter provides a critical reflection on its usefulness for evaluating teaching and learning technologies. The chapter begins with a discussion of important issues in evaluating technology-based teaching and the kinds of information that can be collected in an evaluation. It then introduces the framework and uses one of the evaluation studies conducted at the Open University in order to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the framework.