Assessing the Impact of English Language Skills and Education Level on PubMed Searches by Dutch-speaking Users

The aim of this study was to assess the retrieval effectiveness of nursing students in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. We tested two groups: students from the master of Nursing and Midwifery training, and students from the bachelor of Nursing program. The test consisted of five parts: first, the students completed an enquiry about their computer skills, experiences with PubMed and how they assessed their own language skills. Secondly, an introduction into the use of MeSH in PubMed was given, followed by a PubMed search. After the literature search, a second enquiry was completed in which the students were asked to give their opinion about the test. To conclude, an official language test was completed. The results of the PubMed search, i.e. a list of articles the students deemed relevant for a particular question, were compared to a gold standard. Precision, recall and F-score were calculated in order to evaluate the efficiency of the PubMed search. We used information from the search process, such as search term formulation and MeSH term selection to evaluate the search process and examined their relationship with the results of the language test and the level of education.

Introduction
The internet explosion puts information which was inaccessible to the previous generation of researchers at the fingertips of all internet users. It has become a challenge not to drown in this information flood, and efficiency in searching is therefore of vital importance. With English being the lingua franca of science, the "new Latin" (Eisenberg, 1996), many non-English scientists may experience difficulties when conducting a literature search. A closer look at the language diversity (see figure 1) tells us that more than 78% of all publications in MED-LINE/PubMed are written in English. Only 0.2% of all articles included in MEDLINE are originally written in Dutch, which implies that Dutch users of MEDLINE/PubMed not only have to deal with an English interface, but also with English information. Whereas the use of a common international language may create terminological continuity, there is still a language barrier to surmount for non-native speakers of English, especially since English tends to prefer the use of internationalisms, or words of Greco-Latin provenance, over vernacular terms. However, difficult medical terminology might not be the only factor influencing the efficiency of cross-language information retrieval: a basic level of English knowledge including linguistic items other than domain-specific terminology is needed in order to select relevant information (Lankamp, 1989). Moreover, several sub-languages are needed for efficient bibliographic retrieval: the languages of informatics, documentation and biomedical sciences  (Mouillet, 1999). This research focuses on the impact of several factors, including the English language -and not only terminologybarrier, and the level of education on the efficiency of literature searches by nursing students, specifically master and bachelor students of Nursing and Midwifery. Vendel (1982) argues that medical knowledge plays a crucial role in the understanding of English medical literature. Next to the language aspect, this medical background adds an extra dimension to this study. Therefore, we opted for two different groups of students: Dutch-speaking master and bachelor students. Both groups took the exact same test. The bachelor students were recruited at the Nursing Department of the University College Gent (n=31), the master students at the Department of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Antwerp (n=23). In the academic year 2008-2009, a total of 5,547 students (see table 1) registered for a bachelor training in one of the 13 institutions which offer this training in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. 4,532 (82%) of them were female students, whereas only 1015 (18%) were male students. This distribution is comparable to the distribution male/female in our test sample, where we had 23 female (74%) and 8 male (26%) bachelor students. Analogously, the number of male and female master students is reflected in the test group of master students: we had 18 female (78%) and 5 male (22%) respondents, compared to 211 female (76%) and 66 male (24%) master students 5 Flemish institutions.  The respondents from the bachelor and master training took a compulsory course in the first year of their training in which they were initiated into the domain of research and where they learned to search for and understand specialist literature. In addition, the master students in our test group attended an additional programme on scientific research in their master training, which includes methodological principles of literature searching and systematic review and analysis of literature. One of the questions we will try to answer in this study is whether these master students actually perform better on the literature search test than the bachelor students, as their background in literature searching and scientific research is somewhat broader.

Test
This study deals with problems related to query formulation and to reading comprehension, which is crucial to the selection of relevant information. The test consisted of five parts. First, the students completed an enquiry which focused computer skills, familiarity and experiences with the search system, i.e. PubMed, and self-assessment of the English language skills. After completion of this questionnaire, an introduction into the use of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) in PubMed was given. PubMed is an interface to MEDLINE, which is the world's largest biomedical literature database created by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). MeSH is a controlled vocabulary also created by the NLM for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the biomedical sciences. PubMed users can consult this vocabulary to enhance their literature search.
In the third stage, the students conducted a literature search for a specific theme in nursing. This literature search was assessed in several different ways (cf. section 3.1). The students were asked to search for very specific information about fall prevention. The question was asked in Dutch, as the students' information needs normally also arise from a real-life situation in which the problem is formulated in Dutch. Subsequently, a second questionnaire was completed in order to see how the students experienced this test.
For an objective assessment of the students' language skills, an official language test was completed (cf. section 3.2).

Evaluation of the search process
The students had fifteen minutes for their PubMed search. In these fifteen minutes, they had to go through the whole search process, from query formulation to relevance judgement. The result was a list of documents the students deemed relevant to the search question. These results were then compared with a gold standard. From this comparison, precision and recall rates and F-score were deduced. F-score is a harmonic mean of precision and recall in which both scores are weighted evenly: Kagolovsky and Moehr (2003) define information retrieval as a science which has two links: one to computer science, and one to behavioural science. The interaction between user and information retrieval (IR) system is very important for this research, as IR comprises much more than just document retrieval using computers. Therefore, we analysed not only the results, but also the search process. We used the Morae software (http://www.techsmith.com/morae.asp), a program specifically designed to record and analyse user-computer interaction, which allows a researcher to capture all operations executed by a user and to log tasks, markers, marker scores and add text notes. In the study configuration, we defined several tasks, including reading the search question (task 1), searching for relevant articles (task 2), final selection of articles (task 3), hesitations and/or errors (task 4), abstract/article view (tasks 5 and 15 to 23), and individual searches (tasks 7 to 14), which measure the time from search term formulation to article selection. Hesitations and errors can disputably be classified as a task, but this is the only way to mark events which occur over a period in time. This time span is important for our analysis, as it could indicate that the user is having problems with the search system, or that the user needs some time to think about the formulation of a search term. We also defined 26 different markers, the most important of which are "Search term formulation", "MeSH term selection", "PubMed search" and "Article selection". To each search term formulated and each MeSH term selected by the participants, a score was assigned: 0 for a "bad", 1 for a "medium" and 2 for a "good" search or MeSH term. Medium search terms include typographical errors such as physiotherapy progroms or resiential care, orthographical errors like fysiotherapy or multifactoriel intervention, and search terms which are not completely relevant or which are not meaningful enough to include in the query. Examples of this kind of search term are resident or clinical path. Bad search terms include incorrect translations, such as kine, kinesitherapi and kinestics (instead of physiotherapy; translation for the Dutch word kinesitherapie), movingexercises or residention nursinghome. Search terms which are not relevant for this information search or too general to achieve relevant results (e.g. therapist or housesettings) are also considered as bad search terms.

Evaluation of the English language skills
The participants completed a freely available diagnostic language test, DIALANG (www.dialang.org). This test allows us to compare the English language skills of both test groups and to link the results to their performance on the literature search test. The test has been internationally validated and was developed by more than twenty major European institutions, with the support of the European Commission. It is based on the Common European Framework of Reference and is available for fourteen European languages, including English. The participants completed the reading and vocabulary test. We can hypothesize that, in order to be able to select and understand relevant articles, users of PubMed should at least have B2 or C1 level on the reading and vocabulary test. With a B2 level in reading, people should be able to understand articles and reports about contemporary issues and most short stories and popular novels. A C1 level in reading means that the test person can understand long and complex factual and literary texts as well as differences in style and specialised language in articles and technical instructions. People with a B2 level in vocabulary should be able to write reports and essays, and people with a C1 level in vocabulary can write reports and essays about complex subjects.

Language skills
The participants were tested for their English language skills in reading and vocabulary. They completed both parts of the DIALANG test, and their results were compared to their self-reported language skills.  We did not find a significant relation between the level of education (bachelor/master) and the scores on the language test. However, as can be observed in table 2, 65% of the master students have a B2 or C1 level for reading, whereas bachelor students scored somewhat lower: 48.4% obtained a B2 or C1 level. The scores for the vocabulary test were somewhat higher: 84.5% of the master students obtained a B2/C1 level, compared to 77.4% of the bachelor students obtained a B1/B2 level. These results correspond to their self-assessment results: we found a positive correlation between the self-assessment and the reading test scores (r s =0.400; n=71; p=0.00) on the one hand, and between the self-assessment and the vocabulary test scores (r s =0.346; n=71; p=0.00).
Master students also seem to estimate their language skills higher in the pre-test survey than the bachelor students who participated in this test.  Another correlation which we investigated, was that between the language skills and the results of the literature search (F-score). Both reading and vocabulary tests correlate positively with the F-score (r s =0.261; n=71; p=0.028 and r s =0.258; n=71 and p=0.0298 respectively). This means that participants who have better English language skills perform better on the literature search task. Table 4 shows the F-scores per level of English language skills.  The relationship between the maximum time between inputs and the results on the language test is also interesting. Longer periods of inactivity (and thus a higher maximum time between inputs) might indicate that the test person was hesitating or unsure about the next step.
We found a non-significant negative correlation (reading test: r s =-.226; n=71; p=.058 and vocabulary test: r s =-.098; n=71; NS) between the scores on the language test and the maximum time between inputs, which means that higher scores on the reading and vocabulary tests often go together with a lower maximum time between inputs, or longer hesitations go together with low scores on the language test. These hesitations might be caused by uncertainty about the translation into or interpretation of the English language. A non-significant negative correlation (r s =-0.267; n=71; p=0.29) was observed between the participants' scores on the vocabulary test and the number of bad search terms formulated during the PubMed search. This means that participants who scored badly on the vocabulary test, tended to formulate a higher number of bad search terms.

Precision, recall and F-score
Precision, recall and F-scores were very low in both groups: the master nursing students had a mean precision of 29.97% and a recall of 4.42%, whereas the bachelor students achieved 37.58% precision and 2.69% recall. The F-scores for master and bachelor students were 7.22% and 4.85% respectively. The extremely low recall, precision and Fscores in both groups can partly be attributed to the limited time (15 minutes) the students had to search for relevant documents. Table 5 shows the average and maximum Fscores for both groups.  Table 5: F-scores in both test groups The differences between both groups were not significant, probably due to the very low scores. After the test, the participants were asked what they thought of their search process and of the selection of articles they had made. We found a strong positive correlation between the participants' perception of how they performed on the test, and their overall F-scores, which means that they have a realistic view of their performances (table 6). rs n p good selection -F-score .535 71 .000 found easily -F-score .517 71 .000 Table 6: Correlations between F-score and search result satisfaction

Level of education
Apart from the correlation with precision, recall and Fscore and the result on the language test, some observations can be made as to the level of education. When asked whether they use biomedical databases to search for -(bio)medical-information, all master students responded positively, as opposed to only 45% of the bachelor students. Master students tend to search for medical information in English more frequently than bachelor students do (Mann-Whitney U=245.00; z=-4.42; p =.000). When asked whether they find it more difficult to search for information in English, the bachelor students are less certain about their skills than master students (Mann-Whitney U=404.50; z=-2.54; p=.011). A bigger proportion of the bachelor students responded positively when they were asked whether they need more time to read English (medical) articles than to read Dutch articles (Mann-Whitney U=441.00; z=-2.27; p=.023) There are also some differences between both groups with respect to their experience with PubMed. The master students received a more elaborate introduction into searching with PubMed than bachelor students did (Mann-Whitney U = 156.00; z = -5.97; p = .000), and -consequently?-they use this medium more often to search for medical information (Mann-Whitney U=78.00; z=6.38; p=.000). All the master students in the test group indicated that they knew what MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is, and 77.5% sometimes use them to look for information in PubMed. 12,5% always use MeSH in PubMed. Only 3.2% of the bachelor students knew what MeSH was, and none of them had ever used this controlled vocabulary to search PubMed. When asked what their preferred language to look for medical information was, 82.5% of the master students expressed a preference for English, as opposed to only 9.7% of the bachelor students. As mentioned above, the maximum time between inputs can be an indication of how long participants hesitated before taking the next step. We found a positive correlation between the level of education and the number of mouse clicks (t(42.289)= 5.496; p= .000). This might indicate that they are more proficient in searching PubMed (see also figure 2).

Figure 2: Maximum time between inputs for bachelor and master students
We used the Mann-Whitney test to analyse the relation between the level of education (bachelor/master) and the number of bad search terms formulated during the PubMed search. This test indicated a significant relation (Mann Whitney U=427.5; z=-2.261; p=.023) between the number of bad search terms and the level of education. In other words, bachelor students formulated more bad search terms than master students during their literature search in PubMed.

Search process
The students were asked to use MeSH terms to search for relevant information about a certain question. This means that they first entered a search term, and looked for most relevant MeSH term. Subsequently, they constructed a query by combining their MeSH terms with the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT. As opposed to the number of good, bad or medium search terms, the selection of incorrect MeSH terms proved to have a negative influence on the F-scores (r s =-.259; n=71; p=.029), as did the selection of medium MeSH terms (r s = -.144; n=71; NS). The selection of good MeSH terms correlates positively with the F-scores (r s =-.140; n=71; NS). This is due to the fact that the students used MeSH terms to construct their queries, and not free text. If they entered a bad search term (e.g. kinestherapy for physical therapy), either a warning message appeared saying "The following term was not found

Conclusion
We found that English reading and vocabulary skills have an impact on the recall, precision and overall F-score of the search. Master students of Nursing and Midwifery did not achieve significantly better results on the language test or for the PubMed search than bachelor students of Nursing. However, their knowledge of the search system is better, which is reflected in their lower maximum time between inputs. The master students formulated a lower number of bad search terms than their colleagues from the bachelor training, but as they constructed their queries with MeSH terms, this did not influence their PubMed search. The Medical Subject Headings proved to be a useful language aid, as bad search terms yield a warning message and incite the user to formulate a better search term. In our future research, we would like to conduct the same test at the Nottingham University Nursing School (UK), so that we have a test group (Belgian students) and a control group (British students). We will also ask an expert in bibliographic retrieval and an expert in the domain of the search question ("accidental falls in elderly") to perform the PubMed search, in order to compare their search techniques and results to those of our test group.
In the final stage of our research, we will conduct a similar test, but with a somewhat different set-up. A Dutchspeaking test group and control group will perform an internet search for some specific medical information, like the one the participants did in this test. However, the test group will get language support, whereas the control group will not. This language support will be provided in the form of Dutch translations of the MeSH.


Educational Software as a Learning Tool for Primary School Students

In the last years, thanks to the Internet and to the rapid development of technologies, multimedia applications and hypermedia based softwares became every day more important joining traditional media in the information diffusion framework. Moreover, due to their characteristics, these kind of tools resulted very suitable to gain children’s (and not only children’s) attention thus, by consequence, software producers, institutions and private programmers started using their potentialities for the development of instruments to be used expressly for teaching: the so-called educational software (ES). This chapter is organized as follows: in section 2 the main characteristics of educational software will be described together with a brief sketch of their story; in section 3 the characteristics of educational software will be analysed form a pedagogical point of view highlighting the advantages of the use of the involved technologies; in section 4 the main tools for the development of educational software will be discussed and finally in section 5 some case representative study of learning tool addressed to young users are described.

Introduction
In the last years, thanks to the Internet and to the rapid development of technologies, multimedia applications and hypermedia based softwares became every day more important joining traditional media in the information diffusion framework. Moreover, due to their characteristics, these kind of tools resulted very suitable to gain children's (and not only children's) attention thus, by consequence, software producers, institutions and private programmers started using their potentialities for the development of instruments to be used expressly for teaching: the so-called educational software (ES). This chapter is organized as follows: in section 2 the main characteristics of educational software will be described together with a brief sketch of their story; in section 3 the characteristics of educational software will be analysed form a pedagogical point of view highlighting the advantages of the use of the involved technologies; in section 4 the main tools for the development of educational software will be discussed and finally in section 5 some case representative study of learning tool addressed to young users are described.

A global sight on educational software
The development of ES has been influenced by the parallel development of the hardware it was running on. In facts, one of the biggest problems related to the early years of ES consisted in the difficulty for teachers and users to maintain a software over the years due to the rapid change of technologies and to the lack of stable platforms.
The first examples of computer tools which can be defined educational software were produced within the military framework and were designed to be used to train personnel to perform several tasks. The flight simulator for instance was developed in the early 1940s and was used to generate aircraft on-board instruments data which were provided to unexperienced recruits; furthermore in the military environment, 30 years later, the synthetic radar data generator was used for similar training purposes. In that period the multimedia capabilities of computers were very limited and in most cases software could only interact with the users by means of simple graphics, texts and the keyboards. Moreover these military-tasks addressed software were isolated cases, developed to satisfy some particular need without denoting any attitude to sketch out the guidelines for the conscious production of ES. In the 1960s institutions start understanding the potentiality of educational software for civil purposes and some American universities -thanks to the availability of the first mainframe computers (with time sharing) -laid the basis of a solid theoretical and practical foundation for the creation of ES. In particular universities gave birth to a set of softwares to be used both by teachers in classrooms and students by their own concerning typical school topics such as maths or engineering. All the softwares were developed step by step and tested in the classrooms with students in order to assess their effectiveness (Mathis Johnson, 2003). The advantages of the use of such tools were discovered in that period and were exploited: computers were used to provide information, assess students work and manage the results obtained by the students during the tests. The most advanced titles -such as for instance PLATO whose screen shot is presented in figure 1 -were customizable and expandable by teachers in order to allow a virtually infinite collection of lessons and tests and embedded ad-hoc languages for the creation of new contents. The appearance of microcomputers on the market together with the experience gained in this years by software producers and by those teachers who started using computer is at the basis of the expansion of the successive years (1970s-1980s). The coming of microcomputers at accessible prices such as Commodore PET, the Apple II, the Atari XL/XE, the Sinclair which were often equipped with the BASIC programming language allowed people to create software at home or at school. In this period a quantity of programs were produced and between them some of the most creative and famous tools for students. The new ES were now designed to be captivating, to get students attention, they were at the same time challenging and simple to use and had a lot of success in classrooms. The major problem in this period was represented by the difficulty, for teachers and users who created or extended their own products, of distributing them to other people as programs written on a microcomputer usually did not work on another due to the lack of a real standard for the hardware and the programming languages. In the '90s, due to the increasing number of software houses and to the improvement of computers features (graphics, sound, interfaces, platform standards, computer networks and storage devices such as CD-ROMs), a very high number of softwares for all possible subjects were produced. Unfortunately the growth of products number did not always correspond to the same growth in terms of quality and innovation although very interesting ES were produced (this is the period of living books). Nevertheless ES obtained a lot of success and have been permanently included in school classes as powerful teaching tools. In this period the world of ES is mainly influenced by the software companies and their commercial requirements which led to the origin of the so called edutaintment: products more oriented to their entertaining side by respect to the purely educational one. Through the years many types of software have been developed for a number of different purposes and many genres have been experimented: some of them were represented by just a few titles and failed while others had a larger success and become standard types of ES. The main types can be classified on the basis of their teaching approach as follows:  Home learning. In this category it is possible to group a wide set of titles devoted to the home learning of all types of users although particular attention is paid to children. It is often difficult to distinguish real educational software from other products where the gaming nature exceeds their educational nature. This kind of products were developed from the '90s to nowadays due to the large availability of technologies which facilitated on one hand the producers to create captivating software comparable to commercial games and on the other hand the diffusion of personal computers in every house.  Courseware. The term courseware identifies all that software which is intended to be used as a support for school students including both tools expressly designed to be used by the teachers at school both products suitable to be used by students at home for improving their knowledge on specific topics. It is possible to find courseware addressed to students of all the ages: from primary school students to university students. Normally, due to their aim, these products present information and establish a sort of dialogue with students, asking questions and giving immediate feedback. Through the time such type of products have been expanded adding topics, knowledge improvements and in many cases have been organized in order to be used during entire courses and integrated in the curricula.  Edutainment. The term edutaintment is used for describing those products corresponding to a mix between classical computer games and standard educational software. Edutainment reflects a commercial requirement of the public demanding for appealing tools (mainly for children) which must have an educational value and, at the same time, which results an optimal teaching solution for young children. It is possible to gather into this class all those games which have a secondary educational value but have not been created with a clear educational intent can be added. In this case the influence of software producers should be considered as many of them in the years tried to convince the public that their products had some teaching value although their gaming nature was clear.  Reference software. In the first years of '90s the availability of CD-ROMs encouraged the diffusion of reference software such as dictionaries and encyclopedias. Many publisher put on market such kind of products which, in a first time, were the digital translation of already existing prints and in a second moment were enriched by means of multimedia features such a sounds and compressed video. Reference software obtained a large success on the market and many topic-specific products (music, cinema, history encyclopedias, dictionaries for translations...) were created and commercialized. Together with multimedia contents the main aspects of these software was the possibility for the user to navigate through the contents of the encyclopedias by means of links and hyperlinks in the pre-Internet era. Nowadays reference software is migrating from CD-ROMs to the web and is becoming free and open-source thanks to projects such as the most famous Wikipedia which allows the user to examine on line contents and possibly to modify it.

The benefits of using educational software
Multimedia contents and interaction with the user are the main strong point of educational software and the features that mainly differentiate them from traditional media such books and television. Multimedia contents give the software the capability of attracting the user and children specially: cartoons, characters, dialogues, sounds and movies are able to stimulate the curiosity of younger users and push them to the exploration of the software. Moreover multimedia contents represent an upgrade of the learned topics, in facts while studying the first moon landing in 1969, users can look at the corresponding recording or while studying Mozart they can listen to his major compositions. A high level of interaction with the software gives the user the freedom for deciding what to do: users can choose the direction to take for exploring the software and can establish the level of detail of the provided information and stop whenever they want. Links and hyper links through the educational tools invite the user to discover new scenarios, new arguments and surprising points of view supporting the development of associative thinking and of a multidimensional (and multimedial) vision of the same problem. All these features can drastically modify the way of learning of the users changing a passive approach into the wish of learning. Instructors often claim that children learn by doing, thus certain softwares which are expressly designed to involve them actively in the learning process and giving them the control of their education seem to be a key tool for improving learning efficiency (Castro Sanchez et al., 2009). Educational software in facts are not conceived to maximize the degree of knowledge of the users on certain topics but their primary aim is to improve their learning (Guzdial et al., 1997) and, of course, a deep knowledge of the topics handled by the software will be an worthwhile side effect. During computer session children have the opportunity to experience by their own the search for the topics to learn, in a completely different way by respect to what happens with traditional lessons where the teacher decides for everybody. By consequence children experience their own ways of learning and thinking and become conscious of their peculiar learning mechanisms. Children will start controlling their own intellectual activities and will exploit this new skill it in their future studies. Major software products integrate systems for the communication between users and between students and teachers. This aspect results important as it allows the students to share doubts and experiences in a natural way and they can undertake the software exploration together. Thanks to the recent development of Internet technologies the collective use of teaching tools can be done both within the same class with more students sharing the same personal computer and by students located in different geographical areas. Common techniques for the communication among users include instant messaging systems, dedicated email, voice and video call and many others which are currently evolving.
These kind of communication facilities allow the involvement of the teacher (or possibly more than one teacher) as well. Teachers can take part to the determination of the teaching paths of his students by deciding for instance what to propose them or the level of difficulty, help the students, answer their questions in real time. Moreover teachers interacting with their students can evaluate their level of knowledge and plan the subsequent teaching strategies.
A further aspect to be taken into consideration is the benefit deriving from the early use of personal computer by children. Computers are everyday more important in our society and we have to use them for many real life tasks: for hiring a DVD or to buy things on-line. Moreover an efficient use of computer and common softwares skills are required by companies for obtaining good jobs and computers will be in many cases necessary instruments in the working places. For these reasons computer basics should be taught to children as soon as possible in order not to left them behind in a very competitive high-tech world.
Another benefit provided by educational packages is the possibility for the students to self assess their learning. Normally self-assessment tests can be found within the packages at the end of each module (if software is organized in modules) or at the end of a course, so the student can verify his learning by means of quizzes and questions and evaluate his degree of knowledge of the presented topic. Students are often attracted by the test proposed by these tools due to their playful nature or to their simplicity and, by respect to traditional tests proposed by teachers in classrooms, they avoid any subjection to the reaction of the teacher or of the rest of the class. Educational software offers several advantages directly to teachers as well. Main products are offered together with authoring software which allows to modify, extend and update both the contents of the software and the test that can be proposed for students evaluation.
In literature it is possible to find many works where educational software are used in the classrooms and the taught topics are verified within the class by means of several test in order to assess the efficiency of the employed tools: in most cases (Juan Ye & Zhiyong Peng, 2004) the results obtained by educational software are encouraging as they improve users learning and are positively accepted by students who, in addition, get more interested on the handled arguments than by attending traditional lectures. The use of educational tools moreover improves, for the teachers, the possibility of tracking students learning and advancements and can drastically reduce the time devoted to standup lessons giving to the instructor more time for tutoring activities (Carver, 1996). Due to all these features, educational software gained an important role in children education, at school and at home and over the years many themes have been taught by means of such tools exploiting their exceptional multimedial capabilities: history, maths, geometry, computer science, literature, music. Beside these classical themes, further arguments have been handled by other titles in specific fields. In many cases, due to the nature of the treated topics, these latter titles were designed and addressed to older children or to adults but there are some educational tools handling with complex topics to be proposed to young children. These titles fully exploit the potential of educational software to teach in a natural and simple way concepts which could be hard to be understood by young students.

Tools and methods for the development of educational software
The development of educational software is a difficult task as it involves many interacting factors and the cooperation of several professional figures. The development process must in facts take into consideration both pedagogical and computer science factors which are normally handled by two distinct people or groups. The spectrum of activities carried out for the creation of educational tools is quite wide and includes software engineering, programming and the determination and implementation of the educational contents (Reis, 2007). The task moreover is made more complex due to the lack of a common framework for this purpose (Ivan & Josue, 2007). It is in effect quite hard to establish a standard for the realization of educational software because if on one hand the use of standard methods and tools is desirable for speeding up the realization phase of new products and for their flexibility, on the other hand such framework should be able to lead to the creation of deeply different products due to the extremely heterogeneous variety of educational softwares in terms of themes, audience, learning approaches and purposes. Despite the lack of common frameworks there are some properties and requirements which are considered as very important for the success and the learning effectiveness of educational tools. Such requirements concern both technical and pedagogical aspects of the products and can be summarized as follows:  efficient interface: the interface of the product and the interaction with the user must be clear and intuitive. Users -especially if children -must be able to identify the controls on the screen and understand immediately the operations related to each of them. It must be possible to move from one scene of the software to another by means of buttons easy to locate and to interpret and the objects on the screen it is possible to interact with must be highlighted. The choice of images and animations is important as well: they should be presented in a a pertinent way avoiding redundancies. The use of background music and sound effects is normally proper whilst spoken should be used only when necessary and in particular circumstances. Finally the use of hot words (words highlighted either for their relevance or because they are link to other pages or have particular functions) is recommended.  quality multimedia contents: multimedia is one of the main aspects which differentiate educational tools from books. Although multimedia gives a fundamental contribution to the effectiveness of the software the abuse of multimedia contents is detrimental as it can distract the users from the central topics handled. The quality both in terms of pedagogical value and audio-visual grade is very important as well as it can determine the attention degree paid by the user to the proposed contents.  appropriate contents: the proposed contents must be correct and presented in a suitable way by respect to the audience they are addressed to. The software moreover should be able to adapt its contents to the users, addressing to audiences of different age, goals and learning styles (Van Dam, 2005)  multidisciplinarity approach and contents extensions: a multi-disciplinary nature and the presence of contents extensions is a positive feature for educational software as they make it able to attract more the interest of the users; moreover the contents extensions allow the users to choose the topics they want to deepen.
www.intechopen.com  Modularity: modularity allows the developers to easily change or extend the contents of the produced software and lengthen this way its life; moreover, if the software includes authoring tools, it allows the teachers to easily carry out changes for adjusting the product to users needs.  Portability: educational tools must be usable on different kinds of computers, independently from their operative system and their architecture as they will be used both at school and at home. For these reason the use of programming languages and developing tools allowing a cross-platform use is preferable together with the capability of using the software on-line, possibly embedded in HTML web pages.
In the past educational softwares were constituted by monolithic applications developed within a software company, mainly by computer scientists and technicians resulting in products oriented to the computational efficiency rather than to pedagogical contents. This behaviour was mainly due to the market influence which in the '90s led software houses to the creation of appealing products suitable to a wide range of users fascinated by the emerging multimedia technologies. Nowadays the educational software producers are oriented to the creation of components and libraries for a modular development of educational tools. The so created products are everyday more standardized, powerful and simple to use and present several strong points which are determining their success. Components give the possibility of providing to the meta-users (those people who will create the final educational tool by means of these components) some basic instruments which will constitute the basis of the final product which will be customized in the direction of particular requirements with a considerable saving in terms of time and programming efforts. The use of components allows non expert programmers to implement the software thus teachers and educators will be able to accomplish this task which was otherwise a programmers prerogative. This way teachers, instructors and topic experts will take care of the contents and the cognitive aspects and, on the other side, programmers will direct their efforts to the creation of good components with more interactivity and multimedia. The development process of educational software through standard components follows the traditional scheme depicted in figure 2 which starts with a requirements analysis phase where contents providers are involved for establishing "what" is going to be developed and "how", then the components to be realized are determined and defined. Once this planning phases are concluded, components are implemented and in the last phase are assembled into the final software which is at last tested. The use of customizable components improves both the technical and contents quality as it enables instructors and programmers to contribute to the product only in their specific fields www.intechopen.com of interests and encourages the development of flexible and easy updatable software which will be modified -depending on the contingent necessity -by topic experts or computer scientists. Various kinds of components are created by programmers for a multitude of functions: graphics, animation, simulation, interaction with the users, sound effects and music... Within this framework educators will add the contents by creating knowledge repository which will interact with technical components. Once components are completed the educational software can be released. Normally this last phase consists of the compilation of the meta-software into the final usable product (Roschelle et al., 1999). Softwares created by means of standardized components present some advantages for the end users as well. Users in facts will easily get used to a standard interface which will be similar for any software they are using (provided it was realized by means of the same package) and will have immediately familiarity with interactions and way of use. Furthermore the simplicity of use of the components will allow users to modify them for creating their own learning tools perfectly fitting for their learning styles and teachers will model the tools they use on the basis of classes demands. Commercial (and not) common components can easily be obtained. Many of them are realized by means of popular programming languages such as Java. These languages allow a modular realization of components and an easy integration among technical and pedagogical issues together with a high flexibility and updating capabilities. Components developed in Java in particular take advantage of all the capabilities of this language, creating components exploiting heredity and abstract implementations which make easy and fast the creation of the final product. Many educational softwares which can be found nowadays (often on line) have been produced by employing Java and Flash. These technologies allow the programmer to embed the final product in web pages by means of Java Applets which can be integrated in HTML pages with a few commands. For these reasons such tools are everyday more popular and users are becoming very familiar with interfaces and commands utilized in these softwares.

Educational software case studies
Educational software is becoming everyday more important and is becoming an integral part of educational tools used by students of all the ages. In some countries the use of such instruments has been included in curricula and teachers are involved in the development phase of many of them. Schools and institutions are favourable to the introduction of educational software and actively operate for their diffusion. In particular it can be mentioned the work carried out by the UK institution Schoolzone which, with the contribution and help of many teachers, edited an inventory of educational software on the market in order to help schools (and teachers) in the choice of software to purchase. The list -which can be found on http://www.schoolzone.co.uk/resources/evaluations/GuideEdition6.pdfincludes for each title a description of the software and its evaluation on the basis of several criteria. The advantages of using educational software at school are manifold. They are acknowledged to extend the exploration capabilities of students thanks to the variety of media involved and to the quantity of information they can provide.
The appeal offered by these software makes learning more natural especially for young students so that they are spontaneously pulled toward the search of new information, playing some games. The use of educational software at school in facts contemplate as well home sessions for the students. Simulation softwares provide a link between theory and practice so that those concepts which are taught by the teacher in the classrooms can be empirically tested by means of the computer encouraging active discovery behaviour (Morsi & Jackson, 2007). Educational tools at school are used for evaluating students preparation as well: some softwareexpressly designed for the use at school -include modules for the assessment of students learning and many times these evaluation are provided autonomously by the software in a transparent way by respect to the user whose feedbacks and/or answers are passed to the teacher. Teacher -beside the merely evaluation of student comprehension of topics -uses the information provided by softwares for scheduling what to teach and how to teach. Teachers use educational software for reducing the time spent teaching in classrooms and possibly make use of this time for tutoring activities.

Educational tools: some sample case studies
Many are the themes handled by means of learning tools have been included in coursewares; most common topics are mathematics, computer science, history, literature . In the following some softwares of particular interest exploiting some of the functionalities described in this work are presented as examples.
A software for improving mathematical skills in a natural way (Polard & Duke, 2002). Pollard and Duke presented in their work an educational tool for teaching mathematics to young children by exploiting all the functionalities offered by multimedia and PC-user interactions (Wills, 1994). They noticed that although many tools for teaching basic maths exist only few of them were capable to exploit such functionalities thus they created a software which can teach simple skills. The novelty proposed by the application consists of the freedom left to the student of solving the problem with his own strategy, in facts while most maths software simply ask some questions or pose problems and wait for an answer to be entered by the user by means of a textbox, in this case students operate freely interacting with the interface which allows several solving behaviours which were previously established from the analysis of the behaviour of children using paper and pen. Five possible behaviours were analysed and implemented through five interfaces which are proposed to the users in a transparent manner. In their work the authors show, by means of a series of test on children, that effectively users when coping with the proposed problem apply their own techniques for reaching a solution and improve their mathematical skill. The most interesting aspects of this work are the importance acknowledged to the possibility given to users to interact in different ways with the software. This consideration lead to the design of an adaptive interface which allows users to choose their strategies.
A software for exploring art and history of Venice. VeGame (Bellotti et al., 2003) is a software developed by some researchers of Genoa University with the aim of making the visit of Venice a challenging and pleasant experience enhancing this way the quantity and www.intechopen.com quality of information obtained by such activity. VeGame (Venice Game) is substantially a game to be run on hand-held computers which guides through the visit of most important art and history sites of the city in the context of a treasure hunt. The game -addressed to young people -can be played in teams or individually and consists of a series of mini games which require the visit of main interest places of the city (squares, churches, monuments...). Some of these games ask for the completion of inscription which can be found on monuments, some others the reconstruction of images of paintings to be observed in churches or museums, further games need the exploration of some zones for answering some questions exploiting clues present in the streets. VeGame exploit graphics and multimedia and provides a lot of information on the city; it is possible for instance to see the map of Venice or to get information on a church the user is visiting or a painting hei is looking at. The interaction with the software is extremely simple and natural and exploits the hand-held features. From a pedagogical point of view the software stimulates a constructive learning in the users which interact with the environment and are let to the observation of the city and to the gathering of many information for solving the riddles. The gaming nature of the software is very important as well, in facts it challenges the users which spontaneously look for information, observe and experience the exploration as a game. From a technical point of view the software was realized in an XML based language which allows an easy integration of multimedia contents and can be simply extended and modified in the future seconding users and instructors exigences.
A software suite for the sensitization of children to environmental themes. "Three little pigs discovering materials" (Vannucci et al., 2009) is a software suite for the sensitization of primary school students to environmental themes such as the correct usage of materials, energy saving and recycling. Teaching in this case is made by relating, in the form of a highly interactive living book, the fairy tale of The three little pigs opportunely modified in order to relate the desired concepts. This software is a practical example of several methodologies and features described in this chapter and employed for the realization of a tool for teaching relatively complex concepts and addressed to young users. In particular due to the age of the it was paid attention to aspects such as the active and continuous involvement of the users in order to maintain higher as possible their attention to the handled topics according to the considerations on the development of efficient teaching tools proposed by (Barbosa & Maldonado, 2006). For this reason the structure used for the development of the software follows the scheme of cartoons and comics, multimedia was used to create captivating scenarios and characters. Some games were added and entertaining elements were used in all the components of the suite for the same aim. The suite is composed by three interconnected parts that the user can freely explore and which are listed below and subsequently described more in detail:  the main story: in this part of the suite the main story of the three little pigs is told by means of interactive animations. Beside the story, many informations concerning the materials employed by the little pigs are passed to the user.  the knowledge improvements: where main informations about materials, their use and their recycling process are reported together with simple quizzes and other curiosities on the treated themes.
 the games: some well-known games have been realized in order to verify in a funny way the learning of the concepts and to entertain the young users.
The main story by means of 35 scenes relates the tales of The three little pigs which is used as a pretext to discuss about the desired environmental issues such as the materials employed for building pigs houses or to perform common works. In addition to these scenes some others such as the one shown in figure 3 have been added for focusing on some material themes. During the story it is possible to interact with characters and to move from one scene to another. Scenes were designed to be appealing to children. In particular they are colourful, full of animations and interactions. Scenes include music and sound effects and both narration and dialogues are written (by means of comics-style balloons) and spoken for those children who still can not read. Currently an Italian and English version of the software exist. The main story works as a starting point for reaching additional scenes where environmental themes are handled more in detail. In particular from main story scenes it is possible to obtain further explanations on materials by clicking on some highlighted objects in the scene. For instance in figure 4 by clicking on the wooden house the user will jump to a set of scenes describing wood properties. For each of the handled materials (steel, wood, concrete, glass, plastic) several aspects are described: their story, their use and features and their recycling. This part of the suite is characterized by the presence of many interactions with the scene elements. By clicking on objects and characters for instance the user gets explanations on particular stuffs or curious information and hints. During the narration children are asked to answer questions and play simple games on the described topics in order to keep them interested on the themes and to verify users learning. The aim of the previously described parts of the suite is to provide to the users information for a correct usage of materials. In order to evaluate the comprehension of the taught concepts and to entertain the users, two interactive games were developed. The developed games maintain a link with the other parts of the suite, in facts they share characters and scenes of the main story and the same philosophy. Games were designed to be stimulating so as to favour their exploration and to make the entertaining nature emerge hiding the educational one. The two games (whose screen shots are depicted in figure 5a and 5b) which have been implemented are very popular among youngsters and easy to be played by primary school children. The first one is the Memory game where a set of card pairs are placed on the table and the player has to find all the couples by disclosing the cards two by two. The suite includes a particular extension of this popular game: the associative memory in which couples are associated by a particular criterion (i.e. objects made on the same material) which was particularly appreciated by children. Fig. 5. a, 5. b Screen shots from the two games included in the suite. Figure 5. a (on the left) shows the puzzle game while figure 5. b (on the right) the memory game.
The suite was implemented by using Flash animations and the Java programming language. Both these standards allowed the use of a lot of multimedia contents and, by using the ActionScript extension, the use of components characterized by high interactivity with the user which made the tool easy to use even for young children. Furthermore these technologies are familiar to children as many web pages already use it.
The suite can be either part of a stand alone executable software or embedded in an HTML page through a an Applet thanks to the emploied development tool. Flash and the Java programming language in facts grant the portability of the software which is a key issue for a wide use of the software (Beynon & Mackay, 1993).
The whole suite has been tested by a group of primary school children who interacted with the software in all its aspects and enjoyed it. In particular students liked the story and the extra contents for their cartoons-like appearance and for the interaction possibilities. Subsequently in the talks and interviews with the teachers they proved a good understanding of the key concepts handled by the software proving this way its efficiency.

Conclusions
In this chapter the role and the significance of educational softwares as learning tools was discussed. In particular their features were highlighted together with the advantages provided to the users (both learners and teachers) by the use of multimedia and interaction with the user which are offered by the last generations of these tools. The evolution of educational software has been outlined drawing attention to technological development which since the first appearance of learning tools played a fundamental role in their characterization and efficiency. The key features of educational software have been pointed out and their importances have been analysed both from a technical and from a pedagogical point of view and most importance technologies for the implementation of such instruments have been described and discussed. Finally three representative case studies of existing educational tools have been described in order to show how the discussed techniques are put into practice. From the analysis and considerations carried out in this chapter the importance of educational software emerges as they can offer to users and in particular to children a new and exciting approach to the learning process encouraging autonomy, self consciousness, a personal learning styles, the involvement of experience and a multi-sensory learning. Since many decades Education Science and Technology has an achieved tremendous recognition and has been applied to variety of disciplines, mainly Curriculum development, methodology to develop e-learning systems and education management. Many efforts have been taken to improve knowledge of students, researchers, educationists in the field of computer science and engineering. Still many problems to increase their knowledge on daily basis so this book provides newly innovations and ideas in the field of computer science and engineering to face the new challenges of current and future centuries. Basically this book open platform for creative discussion for future and current technologies to adapt new challenges in education sector at different levels which are essential to understand for the students, researchers, academic personals and industry related people to enhance their capabilities to capture new ideas and provides valuable contribution to an international community.

How to reference
In order to correctly reference this scholarly work, feel free to copy and paste the following: Marco Vannucci and Valentina Colla (2010). Educational Software as a Learning Tool for Primary School Students, New Achievements in Technology Education and Development, Safeeullah Soomro (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-307-066-7, InTech, Available from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/new-achievements-intechnology-education-and-development/educational-software-as-a-learning-tool-for-primary-school-students


A reflection of preservice teachers on e-portfolio assessment

E-portfolio assessment is getting more important as online teaching and learning activities are disseminating into instructional processes. Preservice teachers, as the current students and prospective teachers, must possess enough level of skills, abilities, and knowledge on e-portfolio development stages including their preparation, development and evaluation. Therefore, this study aims to gather the ideas of preservice teachers (n=42) from Computer Education and Instructional Technology department who are quite familiar with different technologies. Before and after they actually develop their own e-portfolios, preservice teachers asked several open-ended questions about e-portfolios. Pre and post assessment were analyzed with qualitative data analysis. Results showed that preservice teachers perceive e-portfolios as a context for publishing their work (assignments, projects, and etc...) especially yielded from project based courses. Preservice teachers are divided into three groups with respect to the focus of eportfolio assessment; only product oriented, only process oriented and both process and product oriented decision making. In subsequent to their e-portfolio development, the process of creating e-portfolios has been reshaped in students’ minds from content-to-context to context-to-content. Preservice teachers noted that evaluation of an e-portfolio should mostly concentrate on its visual design, its embedded content and its usability. Although students reported that their skills and abilities extended with eportfolio development, preparation of e-portfolio websites was defined as the challenge. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Introduction
As the technology evolves, we have started to realize how technology affects our daily lives and their inner dynamics. In that sense, researchers have concentrated on how we can take the advantage of technology in relation to the basic and vital needs of human. Learning and teaching process is also affected by these immense researches and innovative efforts are taken place in the education scene. Educational specialists, academicians, teachers, students, and families have commented on how the learning-teaching process has been altered due to the technological developments. New theories of instruction, modern teaching methods, alternative classroom designs, and so forth have been appeared in the literature. In parallel to instructional developments, new evaluation methods have also been designed and implemented in modern educational settings.
E-portfolio is one of the newest evaluation techniques for new learning environments in which students show their artifacts, products and projects as an indication of their functional learning. Especially for the project-based learning method, e-portfolio is one of the best assessment techniques (Gulbahar & Tinmaz, 2006).
An e-portfolio is a collection of texts, graphics, or multimedia components organized in a Web site or a CD-ROM or a DVD. E-portfolios are getting popular in different educational settings since they encourage students' reflections and mostly involve the share of ideas and provide feedback. In e-portfolio development, students are the active member of content creation and selection (Tezci & Dikici, 2006). E-portfolios use "…hypertext links to organize the material, connecting evidence to appropriate outcomes, goals or standards" (Barrett, 2005, p. 5).
E-portfolios could be used for different purposes; observation of personal development, presentation of products and assessments (Mason, Pegler & Weller, 2004). Lind (2007) notifies that e-portfolios have the potential to assist preservice teachers in education faculties for increasing their technology related skills and abilities in addition to their reflective thinking about teaching practices. Besides, e-portfolios are not only for students but also for their teachers (Tezci & Dikici, 2006).
There are several studies on using e-portfolios for evaluation and assessment activities which demonstrate how much e-portfolios create positive outcomes. The study results of Gulbahar and Tinmaz (2006) showed that use of eportfolios assisted students to overcome their anxiety and augment their confidence levels. Moreover, study participants liked the e-portfolio assessment system integrated into their courses. Akç l and Arap (2009) summarize their study that all learners liked the use of e-portfolio where more permanent knowledge occurred at the end of the e-portfolio process. Carney (2004) concludes from seven cases studies that e-portfolios of preservice teachers are their self-portrayal as a teacher showing their philosophies of education. Montgomery (2003) also highlights that e-portfolios are important vehicles for supporting learners' reflective thinking. Kocoglu (2008) stated that e-portfolios are important tools for preservice teachers for enhancing their professional activities. E-portfolio assessment supports critical thinking of learners with reflective thinking actions (Lynch & Purnawarman, 2004). Thus, as the online instructional activities triggered by innovative technologies, it is indispensable that educators should take advantage of e-portfolio assessments (Yilmaz, & Çetinkaya, 2007).

Participants
This study was conducted in a private university at department of "Computer Education and Instructional Technology" in the "Teaching Methods -I" course with third grade students (N=42, 26 female and 16 male) with an average age of 23. From pre-test, only four participants stated that they used and developed e-portfolios earlier than the course.

Design of the Study and Instrumentation
The "Teaching Methods -I" course is about the concepts of method and teaching strategies, different methods of instruction and teaching as applied to computer education and a special emphasis on computer education at secondary education and special teaching methods using technology. Students were expected to deliver an eportfolio on their personal web-pages provided by university. In e-portfolio, they published their assignments, a unit plan, their presentations, CV and the other things that they want to add. They prepared all these elements through the semester. At the last three weeks of semester, they prepared an e-portfolio web site to upload all these materials. Before they had started to prepare e-portfolios, they were provided with some open-ended questions to ask their views about e-portfolios including the purpose of e-portfolios and the differences with respect to other web sites, their predictions about producing e-portfolios and its usage in schools, and so on. At the end of the semester, they were given similar questions to collect their experiences about design and development of the e-portfolio process.

Findings
After basic demographic questions, students were provided with same open-ended questions at the beginning and the last weeks of the semester. The initial question was about the purpose of e-portfolios from students' perspectives (n=42). Generally students related e-portfolios with broadcasting online about publishing your work (n=14 pretest, n=22 posttest), your personal information (n=13 pretest, n=19 posttest), your assignments (n=12 pretest, n=5 posttest), your projects (n=10 pretest, n=5 posttest), and your attended activities (n=2 pretest, n=2 posttest). Moreover, students stated that e-portfolios are designed for observing personal development (n=9 pretest, n=8 posttest).
Second question was about how students perceive the differences between a regular website and an e-portfolio website. Students reported that e-portfolio is more personal (n=16 pretest, n=26 posttest), has personal products (n=8 pretest, n=17 posttest) and shows personal development (n=4 pretest, n=9 posttest). In subsequent to their eportfolio developments, students highlighted more on "personal" nature of e-portfolios.
Third question was related with e-portfolio and its adaptability into different courses. Students reported that all courses with project based evaluation (n=36 pretest, n=26 posttest) or inquiry based learning (n=2 pretest, n=2 posttest) could use e-portfolios. Additionally, students thought that verbal knowledge oriented courses might utilize e-portfolio systems (n=6 pretest, n=9 posttest) for assessments. One student noted that e-portfolio is more adaptable for higher education.
The fourth question was about e-portfolio should focus on whether the product or process in evaluation. Mostly students pointed that e-portfolio evaluation should concentrate on products (n=17 pretest, n=17 posttest), because education focuses on results (n=1 pretest, n=0 posttest). Afterwards, students remarked that e-portfolio assessments should take process into consideration (n=13 pretest, n=9 posttest), e-portfolio pays attention to personal development of a person through his/her learning (n=4 pretest, n=7 posttest). On the other hand, some students emphasized that e-portfolio should focus on both product and process simultaneously (n=11 pretest, n=14 posttest).
Because it was believed that if the process is effective, then the products will be in a good quality (n=2 pretest, n=1 posttest).
The fifth question was asked in two different forms; predicting the e-portfolio development process at the beginning of the semester and reporting how students proceeded in the e-portfolio development at the end of the semester. Occurring themes where gathered under same categories. First of all, students defined the procedure as a difficult process (n=4 pretest, n=4 posttest). Students stated that they must decide on which software they would use for e-portfolio development (n=2 pretest, n=1 posttest). There observed a controversial situation in regarding with the developmental process. In the pretest, none of the students noted that we should design the documents initially and prepare the web context afterwards, whereas twelve students defined the process in that way. On the contrary, most of the students declared that they designed the web pages first and then they uploaded their documents (n=8 pretest, n=20 posttest).
The seventh question was asked in two forms; predicting the possible challenges that an e-portfolio developer could experience and their experiences during their own personal e-portfolio development process. Generally students reported problems in relation to websites preparation (n=16 pretest, n=11 posttest) together with software (n=6 pretest, n=5 posttest) and web browsers (n=3 pretest, n=0 posttest). Furthermore, students complained about challenges about content development for e-portfolio (n=8 pretest, n=6 posttest). Some students provided ambiguous challenges under the name of technical problems (n=7 pretest, n=9 posttest). Besides, students noted that uploading of the web system could be a problem (n=7 pretest, n=10 posttest). Lastly, students believed that applying visual design principles could be a challenge for them (n=5 pretest, n=1 posttest) and time was another concern (n=1 pretest, n=1 posttest).
The last question was about whether or not students developed some skills and abilities during e-portfolio development progress. Most of the students agreed that they developed skills and abilities (n=30 pretest, n=32 posttest) namely as; web site development (n=14 pretest, n=16 posttest), portfolio preparation (n=6 pretest, n=9 posttest), introducing yourself (n=1 pretest, n=5 posttest) and presenting content (n=1 pretest, n=2 posttest). Very few students noted that they didn't develop any skills and abilities during the process (n=1 pretest, n=4 posttest).

Discussions & Recommendations
Preservice teachers specified that e-portfolio assessment is more suitable for the project-based evaluation oriented courses. As Gulbahar and Tinmaz (2006) stated, learners' reflective thinking within the project based actions will be best assessed by product and process oriented e-portfolio evaluation. With more contemporary approaches to teaching and learning activities, e-portfolio assessments will yield more effective and beneficial results for learners.
Similar to Tezci and Dikici (2006) statements, preservice teachers were the active content and context developers within their e-portfolio development activities. Preservice teachers experienced how a context of e-portfolio could be developed with web design programs, as well as the content of their products for years. Although preservice teachers had been thinking solely on designing web context, the real implementation guided them thinking more about content which will be uploaded to the system. Therefore, whether or not students are provided with e-portfolio context, teachers should emphasize the importance of the content presented.
It was revealed that e-portfolio process assisted preservice teachers to develop different skills and abilities including pedagogical and technological aspects. Hence, as Kocoglu (2008) proclaimed, teachers of e-portfolio developers should inform learners on how much they will furnish themselves with new knowledge, skills and abilities. Besides, learners will be more motivated toward e-portfolio related procedures.
Researchers offer that preservice teachers must inform that e-portfolios focus both on processes and products as an outcome of their activities. Traditional only-product oriented assessment should be replaced with more current assessment approaches which value not only products but also how learners spend their learning time, process in short.
This study is delimited to one single preservice teacher department, because they are aware of utilization of technologies into education. In order to get more detailed results to eliminate the limitations, the same study should be replicated with all other departments in universities. By conducting several further studies, we might have deeper understanding of e-portfolio uses for instructional assessments actions. This study could be supported and enhanced with the quantitative data and its analyses so that we can have more exploratory information about e-portfolios.