Courseware engineering outlined: an overview of some research issues

Courseware engineering is described as a division of the discipline of educational technology. The development of this division stems from practical educational needs that can be itemized as practical goals. These goals could be served by the development and subsequent evaluation of specific approaches, methods, tools, and techniques. Such approaches, methods, tools, and techniques can to a fair degree become computer‐based and would come to form the regular instrumentation for the courseware engineer. In fact, such a de facto growth of the discipline of courseware engineering is taking place. Yet, the growth of courseware engineering as a discipline can not be based solely upon the availability of tools to support development work. The growth of courseware engineering as a scientific discipline can be depicted as a knowledge acquisition process, in which the aim for knowledge is identified, gathered, processed, and refined. The acquired knowledge is initially presumed to be of a rather practical nature but, as maturing disciplines strive for formalization, this knowledge could be increasingly of a more formal nature.