Resumen de Investigating Cross‐national Educational Software Portability:: the Case of Electronic Workbenches
Betty A. Collis, Zhang Ji-Ping, Ivan Stanchev, Dong Zhi-Cheng
A critical issue with respect to improving an international market for educational software is that of portability. What features are most likely to facilitate or thwart the portability of an educational software package? Under what conditions would the cross‐national use of a software package be more likely to occur? These questions have formed the framework for a four‐year study based at the University of Twente in The Netherlands involving researchers and practitioners from more than 20 countries. Part of the study has been focused on the examination of so‐called ‘electronic workbenches’ as particularly promising candidates for cross‐national educational software portability. This paper summarizes international experiences with a particular electronic workbench (EWB for electronics instruction) as a basis for more general recommendations about workbench simulations as a type of educational software well suited for cross‐national portability.
