Week 12 on 9th May 2012 - Testing & Evaluation Part 2

Evaluation

The evaluation stage of the software development process requires the client and developer to review the software. Broadly speaking, they evaluate against the following questions: 

1. Does this software meet the user requirements? 

2. Is it fit for purpose? Evaluation - criteria To answer these questions, the original aims of the software must be evaluated against the following criteria. 

1. Robustness 2. Reliability 3. Portability 4. Efficiency 5. Maintainability.

there are two type of evaluation:

Formative Evaluation - Formative Evaluation is a bit more complex than summative evaluation. It is done with a small group of people to "test run" various aspects of instructional materials. For example, you might ask a friend to look over your web pages to see if they are graphically pleasing, if there are errors you've missed, if it has navigational problems. It's like having someone look over your shoulder during the development phase to help you catch things that you miss, but a fresh set of eye might not. At times, you might need to have this help from a target audience. For example, if you're designing learning materials for third graders, you should have a third grader as part of your Formative Evaluation.

Summative Evaluation - Summative evaluation provides information on the product's efficacy ( it's ability to do what it was designed to do). For example, did the learners learn what they were supposed to learn after using the instructional module. In a sense, it lets the learner know "how they did," but more importantly, by looking at how the learner's did, it helps you know whether the product teaches what it is supposed to teach.

Summative evaluation is typically quantitative, using numeric scores or letter grades to assess learner achievement