ABSTRACT
Like most things to do with computers, computer-assisted learning" materials are difficult to define and impossible to generalize about. Although they share the computer as a common element, that is in many ways the least important aspect of CAL" materials. The exciting and interesting part is the software" or courseware· , which is limited more by the imagination of the designer than by the limitations of the medium. So the problems of evaluating computerassisted learning materials are potentially as wide-ranging as those of evaluating learning materials in general. In practice this overstates the case somewhat, since at any moment there is a degree of consensus as to what computer-assisted learning material is like and some agreement as to what is good and what is bad. The difference from other forms of educational technology is that the educational options made available by the computer keep changing as a result of rapid technological advance, and this makes the task of evaluation, never very easy, considerably more complex and difficult.
Computer-aided instruction and comparative evaluation
