EVALUATION AND EXPLOITATION OF

COURSE BOOKS AND MULTIMEDIA

MATERIALS

EVALUATION AND EXPLOITATION OF COURSE BOOKS

What is Course Books? A textbook, a book designed to accompany a

specific academic course, or one specified by the writers of the course to be read by its students.

http://www.wordnik.com/words/coursebook

• A book that is designed to be used in class by students taking a particular course of study

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/coursebook

Examples of Course Book

The course book can play several different roles in the teaching/learning process. They can be:

a source of activities for practice and communicative interaction

a reference book (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation)

a resource of presentation material

a syllabus

a resource for self-directed learning or self-access

Problems that exist in using just one textbook for different students some are against using a course book for one of the possible following reasons (Ur 1996):

Inadequacy: Every class or better to say every learner has their own learning needs and no one course book

can supply these satisfactorily.

Homogeneity: Course books have their own rational and they do not cater for variety of levels

of ability and knowledge that exist in most classes.

Over-easiness: It may be too easy to follow, and teachers may find themselves as mediator of its

content.

Irrelevance: The topics dealt within the course book may not necessarily be interesting for the

class.

Limitation: A course book is confining and it may lead to boredom and lack of motivation on the part

of the learners.

Not Challenging

Too challengingNot within students’

context

Too wordy

Coursebook Use Omit and replace

The first decision we have to make is whether to use a particular coursebook lesson or not. If the answer is 'no', there are two possible courses of action:

○ First, omit the lesson altogether - we suppose that the students will not miss it because it does not teach anything fundamentally necessary and it is not especially interesting.

○ Second, when we think the language or topic area in question is important, we will have to replace the coursebook lesson with our own preferred alternative.

To change or not to change? When we decide to use a coursebook lesson, we

can, of course, do so without making any substantial changes to the way it is presented. However, we might decide to use the lesson but to change it to make it more appropriate for our students.

○ Add E.g.: If the material is not very substantial, we might add

something to it - a role-play after a reading text, perhaps, or extra situations for language practice.

○ Re-write E.g.: We might re-write an exercise we do not especially like.

○ Replace activities We could replace one activity or text with something else, such

as a download from the Internet or any other home-grown items.

○ Re-order E.g.: We could re-order the activities within a lesson, or even re-

order lessons (within reason).

○ Reduce E.g.: By cutting out an exercise or an activity.

***In all our decisions, however, it is important to remember that students need to be able to see a coherent pattern to what we are doing and understand our reasons for changes.

Options for coursebook use.

Checklist Cunningsworth (1995) illustrates that evaluation can engender

three types, viz. ‘pre-use’, ‘in-use’ and ‘post-use’ evaluation.

According to him, pre-use evaluation

tends to be the most difficult kind since there is no

actual experience of using the course

book.

From another perspective, in-use evaluation is a kind

of evaluation for suitability, involving,

matching the course book against

a specific requirement.

The learner’s objective

The learner’s background

The resources available

E.g.: Enable the learners to write simple sentences based on the pictures shown in the books.

E.g.: Learner’s socio-economic status (SES), language proficiency level, etc.

E.g.: Types of resources, the uses, etc.

On the other hand, post-use evaluation

refers to an assessment of a

text book’s fitness over a period of continual use

Teachers can decide whether to use the same text book in future or

not.

Criteria to select a course book There are two basic areas to consider when

you are selecting a book:

1. Analysing the teaching

situation

Syllabus

Time available

AgeStudents'

background and interests

Class size

Level

2. Analysing the books available. General impression Methodology Grammar Skills Grading Presentation & practice Illustrations Story-line

Series Sexism / racism / cultural

appropriacy Extras Trialled Availability Price

Example 1

Example 2

The selection process can be greatly facilitated by the use of systematic materials

evaluation procedures which help ensure that materials are consistent with the needs

and interests of the learners they are intended to serve, as well as being in

harmony with institutional ideologies on the nature of language and learning.

(Nunan 1991: 209)

EVALUATION AND EXPLOITATION OF MULTIMEDIA MATERIALS

What is Multimedia Materials? Multimedia is media and content that uses

a combination of different content forms.

Example of Content Form Combining in Multimedia

TEXT AUDIO STILL IMAGE

ANIMATION VIDEO INTERACTIVITY

Examples of Multimedia Materials Desktop publishing

Presentation software

Portable Document Format files

Continue…….

Audiobook Videos

, movies, movie clips – fiction and non-fiction

Cartoon movies and clips Video-clips of songs Cartoons of songs Websites for information

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/

Interactive multimediaInteractive children storybook http://

www.magickeys.com/books/farm/page2.html Online learning games

http://gamestolearnenglish.com/fast-hands/CD Interactive

Monitoring is... Evaluation is...Monitoring means to “observe” or

to “check performance”. Monitoring is a continuous process of collecting information using

performance measures.

Evaluation uses the information from monitoring to analyse the

process, programs and projects to determine if there are opportunities

for changes to the strategy, programs and projects.

Perspectives on Evaluation

Multimedia Materials

Why evaluate multimedia educational materials?

What should you evaluate?

When should you evaluate?

WHYTo improve the multimedia productEvaluating can be done in the form of formative evaluation.

To help assess the effectiveness of the instructional material using summative evaluation to judge the effectiveness of instruction materials.

To improve the multimedia development processdevelopment process affected by available resources.

To comply with requirementsEvaluating instructional multimedia materials to see if they comply with standards.

Mayer (2000) adapts several general design principles for evaluation as below:

Correspondent

• The illustrations and the text using underlining styles, appropriate font sizes, font colours and styles, highlights, and arrows.

• Extra descriptions should be minimized in the text along with extra visual features such as unneeded colors and details. Concentrated

Concise

• Illustrations and text fragments should be presented near each other.

Comprehensible

• The text and illustrations should be delivered in ways that help learners visualize the learning material easily.

Coherent

• The text and illustrations should be familiar to learners so that they could apply relevant past experiences to understand the material.

• The presented texts and pictures should follow a consistent, clear and coherent structure. The text and the picture should have the same organizational structure. Concrete

Codable

• Key terms in the text and key features of the visuals should be used consistently.

What should you evaluate?

Students, instruction, process

• Evaluate students learning by measuring :• changes in knowledge. • their real-world performance has been affected • how students use multimedia to generate material (such as portfolios and blogs)• student performance and made predictions.

Usability-usefulness continuum

• Effectiveness, efficiency, and appeal • Functional correctness (correct spelling, legible fonts, margins set, available media

and resources)

Evaluation Instrument The instrument has the form of a

suitability scale questionnaire with five points.Figure (1) is assigned to strongly agree Figure (2) to agreeFigure (3) to neither agree nor disagreeFigure (4) to disagreeFigure (5) to strongly disagreeFigure (0) for those items that cannot be

evaluated

Checklist

Α : Evaluation of the content Β : Organization and Presentation of

the Content C : Technical Support and Update

Process D : Evaluation of learning

When should we evaluate? Summative evaluation

happens later towards the end of the cycle.

Formative evaluation can happen earlier and more frequently.

Before= test students' existing knowledge or their performance

During=  you can observe the learners' behavior and note the sections of the material they seem to have difficulty with.

After= the materials have been deployed.

E-Book Evaluation

THANK YOU