Evaluating Learning Material on Merlot-CEP 811 Attempt 2

Charle Darwin WebPage

Quality of Content:

I felt that this site presented correct concepts of Darwin and Natural Selection. It presented educationally significant concepts that were important to understanding Darwin and how he was able to formulate the theory of evolution.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool:

This website could be used as an introduction to an evolution unit. It briefly describes a lot of the major concepts. It would be great to use this at the beginning so that as we go through the unit and do more detailed activities the students will have already been introduced to most of the material. The description of the topic is clearly stated at the top of the web page. It is all about understanding Darwin and his discovery of natural selection. Going through and reading this web page, interacting with auditory commentary of biographers, watching video clips from PBS, watching video clips of examples that provide evidence of evolution allow the students the ability further explore the concepts that scientifically prove the theory of evolution.

Students will be understand who Charles Darwin is, what observations he made that support his theory of evolution, and how natural selection is the driving force of evolution do after successfully learning with the material.

The characteristics of the target learner are young high school students that are learning about Evolution. I believe that this learning material will improve faculty and students abilities to teach and learn the materials? I provides a little bit of everything (auditory, visual aids, video clips) that help reach out to a variety of learning styles. This material can be readily integrated into the current curriculum and pedagogy with the discipline. It will be a easy integration.

And because of the variety of resources it provides and the ability to easily integrate this material it can be used a variety of ways to achieve teaching and learning goals which are easily identified. I feel confident that good learning assignments for using the software application be written easily.

Ease of Use:

The labels, buttons, menus, text, and general layout of the computer interface are consistent and visually distinct. It is easy to navigate the different components and follow the layout out. It has a nice flow and the set up is easy to follow. Students would not get trapped in the amount of material that is presented. Students would be able to follow this site. It provides a quiz for the students to take so that they can receive feedback

This learning material provides appropriate flexibility in its use and can easily be altered however a teacher would like to use it. It does not require a lot of documentation, technical support, and/or instruction for most students to successfully use the software. Again, it appears to be user friendly and the material is familiar to the students. I think this is an attractive material for the students to learn and explore.