Towards an operational approach for evaluating ICT-based learning environments

Constructivism is a learning theory which states that people learn by actively constructing their own knowledge, based on prior knowledge. A significant number of ICT-based constructivist learning systems have been proposed in recent years. A critical problem related to the design and use of this kind of systems has been the lack of practical means for evaluating the actual conformity of such systems with constructivist principles. Our research aims to help designing truly constructivist learning environments. For that purpose, we have proposed a set of operational criteria for certain aspects of constructivism and we have used them as a useful framework both for designing and for analyzing learning environments. In this paper, we present and discuss three approaches, including ours, which are based on criteria to facilitate the evaluation of constructivist learning environments.