Contexts for evaluating educational software

The evaluation of educational software is of concern to two particular acad emic communities: HCI and educational technology. There is a danger that us ability features are considered at the expense of educational issues (and t he converse of this is of course equally true). This paper considers how th e notion and practice of evaluation in the educational community differs fr om that in HCI and also identifies areas of overlap. It then describes how particular influences and contexts have led one group of evaluators from th e educational community to develop a contest, interactions, attitudes and o utcomes (CIAO!) model of evaluation for computer assisted learning (CAL) ev aluation in distance education. The application of this model is illustrate d by case studies from a recent evaluation project and related research. Th e paper concludes with a discussion of the issues raised for both communiti es by this model for evaluation. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V . All rights reserved.