COMDESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR ‘NEXT WAVE’ EDUCATIONAL TOOLS: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEBMCQ ASSESSMENT SYSTEM
Scott Gazzard, James R. Dalziel · 1998
A recent trend towards increasing use of computers and the World Wide Web (“the Web”) in higher education is currently merging with an earlier trend towards using multiple choice questions in assessment. The use of computers in conjunction with such assessments greatly enhances their potential effectiveness. The Web further enhances the ability to distribute assessment material widely, allows inclusion of multi-media content, and enables a level of interactivity and data collection not possible with paper-and-pencil assessments. With these possibilities in mind, the WebMCQ system was conceived as a means of presenting multiple choice questions to students, and potentially providing immediate feedback on their responses so that WebMCQ could be used as a learning tool in the first instance, and also as a summative assessment tool. The development of software such as WebMCQ is part of a much broader shift made possible by extensively-networked computers and the emergence of the internet. It will be argued in this paper that new models of distribution and utilisation of software are now poised to bring about a major shift in the way software is perceived. Rather than a traditional view of software as a product that is installed on individual computers, the features of WebMCQ led developers to adopt a new distribution model, whereby software resides on a central server and is accessed by subscribers to a service. It is this shift from perceiving software as a product to perceiving software as a service that has potential to bring about enormous changes to software design and utilisation and which, it is argued, will result in the arrival of ‘next wave’ software. Among a host of benefits to consumers will be vastly superior ease of use and convenience, leading to adoption of new software on a massive scale. Next wave software will force software developers to adopt new ways of designing, distributing and supporting software. To illustrate some of the new design principles that future developers will need to consider, the paper includes a discussion of five core design principles used in the development of WebMCQ: ease of use, flexibility, consistency, accessibility, and integrity. Each of these issues are discussed in detail, and several predictions are made about how each may impact upon future software developments. It is concluded that the arrival of next wave software will herald a revolutionary shift in the way educational professionals perceive and use Information Technology.