Design of Educational Software: Programmer and Teacher Approach

Introduction: The design of educational software constitutes a field of juxtaposition, disagreement and opposition, between teachers and programmers, as each one tries to impose his views. This is due to the fact that there have not still been formulated clear rules and directions for the design of educational software, which will be of general acceptance. The initial cause might be on one hand the little attention that has been paid to the design of educational software. On the other hand, it might be the erroneous view that had been formed initially, because, the first that dealt with this were the programmers and not the instructors. More specifically, at the earlier stages, the design of educational software focused on learning and thus it neglected the methodology. So, when the teachers tried to implement the instruction with educational software into classroom, they faced a lot of difficulties. 2 The teacher’s approach O l s o n suggests that teachers use computers, complementary, in order to improve their teaching. Any change or innovation should first be decided by the teacher and then applied on the software development. This new perspective on the design and the development of educational software supports that the designers of educational software should try to understand better the needs of the teachers and the other factors that influence them. Then they should proceed to the design with criterion the knowledge and experience of the teachers, that is, they should try to focus the software design on what actions the teacher could do with it. Olson’s view gives special emphasis on the relation between the teacher and the programmer during the design, use and evaluation of the software.