Perfectmatch.com: how to evaluate and choose a good tool?

Dream Team (a learning circle in International teacher education 2013-12014 in Teacher Education College in Jyväskylä) is an international group of students studying to achieve the qualification of a vocational teacher.

Arja Kunnela
International Group 13 – 14
Teacher Education College
JAMK University of Applied Sciences

We selected the topic of our Pedagogical Development Project to focus on quality of e-learning and how to pick a good tool for teaching especially in online environment. We looked for different types of criteria, some of them were meant to use in evaluating e-materials, not tools. We found also Web 2.0 Selection Criteria by the Online learning consortium, Former Sloan Consortium. (Access, Usability, Privacy & Intellectual Property, Workload & Time Management, Fun Factor). Look more e.g.: http://edtechtoolbox.blogspot.fi/2011/05/web-20-tool-selection-criteria.html

The newest Babson Survey Research Group’s survey in U.S. Higher education was published October 2014. This report, Opening the Curriculum: Open Education Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014 by I. Allen & J. Seaman examines the attitudes, opinions, and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) among teaching faculty in U.S. higher education. Among results they list the most important criteria for selecting teaching resources. Faculties value 1) Proven efficacy, 2) Trusted quality, 3) Cover a wide range of subjects, 4) Works with LMS. (Allen & Seaman 2014, 8)

One of the main findings in the study was: The most significant barrier to wider adoption of OER remains a faculty perception of the time and effort required to find and evaluate it. (Allen & Seaman 2014, 2)

In teaching online open educational resources have an enormous potential to be spread around the world and help educate also there, where other resources are few. John D. Shank wrote his book Interactive Open Educational Resources: a guide to Finding, Choosing, and Using What’s Out there to transform College Teaching (Wiley 2014) to lift these open educational resources to be found, evaluated and integrated into teaching in modern learning environments, both face-to-face and online situations.  We looked through his criteria our cases and found his base: to start from the needs of the students and then find a proper solution to this need of education, evaluate it and integrate to the learning environment for students to use.  Afterwards an assessment can be done in using his criteria. More about his criteria in the next articles.

Arja Kunnela
Information specialist
JAMK University of Applied Sciences