Conceptual design, development and evaluation of an interactive exercise software tool for Household Technology courses

E-Learning is a concept which has been known for a number of years. It was firstly promoted enthusiastically and then quietly came to a halt when the unrealistic expectations set could not be fulfilled. However, it can be a very useful tool when used in the right context and in combination with traditional learning methods. This is demonstrated in this study, where an E-Learning tool was designed as a universal exercise software tool, developed to support the learning and training phase of students in lectures on household technologies, and evaluated on a specific course at the University of Bonn. The tool itself - called ItkA - proves on the one hand to be well suited to encouraging students to do additional self-study and on the other hand is simple enough to allow lecturers with little or no experience of E-Learning tools to implement the specific knowledge of a lecture.