Elementary and Middle School

Using the Evaluation Tool to Compare Online Science Programs

If you have decided to incorporate online (often referred to as “technology-based”) materials into your classroom, you will need to spend some time reviewing the available programs before making your choice. The evaluation tool presented here is intended to help you make decisions about what resources will best meet your students’ needs. We also recommend that you visit the TE-MAT (Teacher Education Materials) Web site. On this site, you will find a considerable array of information and tools relating to the selections and use of both “technology-based” and other instructional materials.

Any time we introduce a new instructional material into the classroom, we should first ensure that it meets at least the following criteria. The new material should:

• Address the science content mandated by local and/or national standards and tests.
• Employ appropriate principles of teaching and learning.
• Assess student learning appropriately.
• Be authentic and trustworthy.
• Dovetail with other current or proposed programs.

In this evaluation tool, these criteria are teased out in more detail to facilitate objective comparison of instructional materials whose differing styles and scopes makes casual comparisons difficult and unreliable. The chart is divided into six sections and poses a total of 22 questions about the nature and organization of the materials. The questions are deliberately open-ended in order to favor qualitative appraisals over simple yes/no responses. We suggest that you use the space to the right of each question to write notes or page references for your own use or so that another reviewer can easily find exemplars of that particular attribute at a latter time.

At the end of the tool is a summary chart, in which a reviewer can list the major strengths and weaknesses of the material in the context of its intended use. The reviewer can also recommend whether the material be used or not, and if it recommended for use, at what grade level and in conjunction with what other instructional materials or strategies.

Download the evaluation tool [pdf].