Effectiveness of the TAPS Packages

Effectiveness Of The Taps Packages

In general, there exist various ways to measure the effectiveness of learning packages. Tessmer (1995) provided a number of variables that could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of multimedia contents such as aesthetics, transparency, forgiveness, matching between the metaphors and the learning experiences, informativeness, seamlessness of contents and media as well as the achievement of the desired learning experiences and learning outcomes. While much work has been devoted to research on the impact of technology in education, there is little known about its effectiveness. Furthermore, there are certain gaps in these research efforts that need to be addressed and require further investigation, specifically the lack of theoretical framework (Institute of Higher Learning Policy, 1999). In most evaluation studies, the important questions concern the comparative effectiveness of various types of learning packages when measured against traditional ones rather than the innovation of the delivery model itself and the factor that contributes to its effectiveness (Institute of Higher Learning Policy, 2000).

According to Psaromilingkos (2003) the effectiveness of a learning courseware is influenced by a number of variables such as: (a) quality of the learning resources (instructional material, exercises); (b) changes of the preferred mode of study (with or without the use of computer technology); (c) computer mediated instructions with peers and instructors and means of communication (e.g. email); (d) the quality of services that the software and hardware infrastructure provide (course management tools, multimedia conferencing systems); (e) time spent on the task using the system and (f) the learner’s profile (learning style, previous experience, etc).

However, the overall effectiveness of the TAPS packages in this study was examined to confirm its design and measured using quantitative techniques such as open-ended questionnaires feedback, as stated in Section 9.5, a selection of questionnaires from the close-ended questionnaires (Table 10.1), and observational results mentioned in Section 10.3. The questions from the close-ended questionnaires were selected on the basis of the majority of respondents who selected “strongly agree” and “agree”. The list of these questionnaires and results (in bold text based on number of students - responses) are shown in Table 1.