Methods and practice of software evaluation: The case of the European Academic Software Award (EASA)

The paper discusses theoretical and methodological problems of software evaluation in Higher Education. It criticizes the commonly used approach in product evaluation using numerically weighted lists of criteria. On this basis, an alternative method with qualitative weighting is presented. The European Academic Software Award held in Klagenfurt/Austria in 1996 (EASA '96) serves as an example of the practical implementation of this method, whose outcome is reported at the end of the paper.