Dalziel's List

In 2001 at the International Computer Assisted Assessment Conference, James Dalziel presented [12], which contains several enumerations of pedagogical and technological models describing CAA in distance-learning, particularly using the World Wide Web. Of particular note to this discussion is his listing of ``the five criteria used to consider the usefulness of the systems'':

1. The ease of use: Dalziel includes designers and students as users whose needs must be met and managed in this list, but others have also included instructors and graders as likely users.
2. The technical proficiency required: Again Dalziel focuses this in terms of the designer of a CAA tool, but for any CAA tool this is of great import, for exactly the same list of actors: designers, students, instructors, graders^3.3.
3. The degree of special hardware or software required to incorporate the tool into learning
4. The ability of the tool to track performance data arising from use of the tool: If we are talking about tools that are primarily focused on the grading of assignments rather than the administration of quizzes for assessment, this is perhaps less important, but remains a good goal in any case.
5. The costs of using the tool to enhance learning: These costs are most certainly measured not just in financial terms, but also in terms of the amount of learning that must take place for people to use the tool effectively in any of our given categories.

This list very concisely enumerates many of the important points that we learned during the development and deployment of Agar, as discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.