Drill-and-Practice software is software that allows students to practice learned concepts and recieve feedback on their answers. Some programs may only let the student know if the answer given was correct or incorrect, while others will give a full explanation detailing why the answer given was correct or incorrect. 

Selecting Good Drill-and-Practice Software

Selecting good drill-and-practice software is important when wanting to use it in the classroom. This type of instructional software is more commonly used for practice. To select good drill-and-practice software, the following must be kept in mind:

• Control over the presentation rate - unless the questions are timed, students should have as much time as they need to answer the questions and examine feedback
• Answer judging - if students must answer a short answer question, the program should be able to discriminate between a correct and incorrect answer
• Appropriate feedback for correct and incorrect answers - feedback needs to be simple and display quickly, as well as not give students motivation for getting wrong answers, like a silly crying face that kids may want to see

Benefits of Drill-and-Practice

Before learning more difficult concepts, teachers believe that students should master and have some sort of automatic recall of easier concepts. Since research has shown that drill-and-practice methods have allowed for students to put information into long term memory, most teachers believe that this is the most efficient way for students to master these easier skills and concepts. There are plenty of drill-and-practice worksheets and activities that can be done by students on paper, however there are benefits to forgoing paper and doing these practices on a computer:

• Immediate feedback - students and teacher recieve immediate feedback for work done
• Motivation - motivates students to do the work on the computer since it is more exciting than doing it on paper
• Saving teacher time - teachers won't have to grade all of the work that is done, since they get the automatic feedback, as well as allowing the teacher to focus on other student needs over grading paperwork

Limitations and Problems with Drill-and-Practice

Although drill-and-practice can be a great go to for many teachers during lessons, it also has its critics. Some educators feel that it is over used and dreaded by students, making the use of drill-and-practice software have a negative impact in education. Two negative criticisms drill-and-practice faces are:

• Percieved misuses - critics believe that teachers are using drill-and-practice for extended periods of time, or else using it to teach new concepts instead of reinforcing old one
• Criticism by constructivists - constructivists associate this type of instruction with traditional teaching methods and believe that is outdated

Even with the criticisms, drill-and-practice is very useful in the classroom when used as it is intended and with other instructional software and tools.