Learning Program

As teachers and other educational professionals and paraprofessionals will likely tell you, one of the finest ways to choose a learning program is to test it out yourself, walking your own way through the learning program as if you were trying to learn and hoping to succeed (using all parts of the program materials, including the quizzes, practice exams, and culminating exams). Granted, your learning style is just one of a handful, and one opinion or test pilot consisting of one person does not a thorough evaluation make, but you will be able to get a fairly good sense of the components of the learning program and whether or not it is appropriate for your children. Besides following the learning program yourself, you can check out the evaluations of testers not affiliated with the particular program (for some companies might claim their x,y,z is the best, most popular, most effective, most widely use, etc., just to sell program packages). In addition, you will want to consider the following variables, all of which are the most immediate and most important to your finding the right learning program:

Consider the skill level of the child. Whether it is set or varied, the learning program should be accessible to the learner and should also push the skill levels, eventually, with more advanced lessons. You might also consider getting a learning program that is reflexive, or that allows the student to go backto review, to drop down to easier materials before struggling on, if necessary.

Consider the motivation level(s) of your child/student. In the same respect, find out the interests and learning style(s): is he/she a kinesthetic learner, engaged most easily with hands-on, doer activities? Is he/she a more visual learner, needing lots of interesting graphics? Is the learner more auditory, requiring music, dialogue, voiceovers, and the like to maintain attentiveness and keep him/her engaged?

Financial and ethnic status may also be important, as might be historical relevance. For instance, Asian and Hispanic learners, while respectful and positive regardless, may not express difficulty understanding contextual examplesif they are from the seventies and feature mostly white people wearing bell bottoms and referring to Watergate. It goes the same way for the impoverished learner who only gets fiction samples centered on the frustrations of the upper class, for example.

Technically, the learning program should WORK. If back buttons will not allow the user to go ack, or if clicking on a multiple choice answer yields incorrect results, the learning program may be in need of revision or is just of inferior quality and should be ignored. In contrast, there are many, many learning programs that are legitimate, effective, and user-friendly. Many have been tested by pilot groups, instructors, and numerous professionals and paraprofessionals in the education field.