Part 3:
Evaluating the Use of ICT in Teaching and Learning

a. Evaluating the Lessons

The teacher's overall feeling about this unit of work was that it was very successful - certainly when compared with previous attempts to teach the topic which had led to demotivated pupils pleading to get on with their practical coursework rather than "doing boring theory". She also felt that pupils' answers to the homework questions were more substantial and thoughtful - and the work had been easier to extract from pupils!

She identified a number of points, which had led to this success:

• Alternative ways of displaying and accessing information, other than books and teacher talk.
• A feeling on the part of pupils that the information they had found was more real, up-to-date, and relevant to them than the normal material.
• Writing reports using IT helped most pupils to express their ideas effectively, as she could encourage them to edit their draft work to improve its presentation and add extra content.
• Using PowerPoint helped them to structure their thinking and focus on key points, as there was not much room on a slide.

There were some aspects, which she still felt, could be improved, however:

• More opportunity for the slower learners to obtain information expressed in simple terms. The information on the implications and effects of IT on CD-ROMs and the web is usually written at quite a high language level.
• Help for pupils to switch from working together to working on their own - many had obviously copied their homework.
• More opportunity for pupils to identify the key points for themselves, rather than the teacher always prompting them to select them point she wanted them to come up with.
• A requirement to use ICT in research and reporting outside the classroom, either at home or during homework club.
• Prompting to evaluate the information they find, rather than just selecting the most useful information for them.
• Combining this topic with the teaching of databases, so that they have a personal interest in applying the ideas rather than just using remote examples.

In general, the following points should be helpful in structuring the evaluation of lessons involving ICT:

• Were pupils motivated by the work?
• What have they learned?
• What is it that contributed to this learning - the activity, the resources, your whole class explanations and interventions, your individual help, prompting and questioning?
• Were any particular groups of learners disadvantaged by the type of work?
• Were there any difficulties in managing pupils' learning or behaviour?
• Were you able to monitor pupils' progress while they were working?
• Were you able to assess their learning from the results of their work?
• What influence did ICT have on the lesson?
• Could the contribution of ICT have been improved further?

b. Evaluating the Resources Used