Incorporation of a software engineering evaluation method in an educational software course in Turkey

The research literature identifies the limitations of pre-service teacher training in the evaluation and assessment of educational software for classroom use. This study investigated the enhancement of IT pre-service teacher training in educational software evaluation through the incorporation of software evaluation techniques from the software engineering discipline. Participants in this study were 25 final year pre-service IT teachers at Faculty of Education at a public university in Turkey. The pre-service teachers were introduced to the software engineering evaluation methods and an instructional educational software evaluation method. The results illustrated that the software engineering evaluation methods enhanced the technical evaluation skills of pre-service teachers and increased their confidence. Pre-service teachers reported that they considered themselves more professional after applying these methods. We believe this work highlighted a method to enhance the educational software evaluation skills of IT pre-service teachers through combining technical evaluation skills with traditional educational methods.