4 th International Computer & Instructional Technologies Symposium. Selçuk University, Konya, TURKEY, 2010; ISBN: 978-605-61434-2-7. pp. 1035-1040 ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS APPROACH TO DECISIONS ON INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE Murat Paa UYSAL, Ph.D. Turkish Military Academy, Defense Sciences Institute mpuysal@kho.edu.tr ABSTRACT: Developments in computer and information technologies continue to give opportunities for designing advanced instructional software while entailing objective and technical evaluation methodologies. With respect of this, one of the hard decisions that the educators have to make is selecting qualified instructional software. Functions of the courseware or types of the instructional software determine the underlying main evaluation criteria. In this study, these criteria are restricted to instructional design, content and technical features of instructional software for the simplicity purposes. A decision on any instructional software and its analysis process need systematic and structured guidance along with the necessary analytical tools that would lead to better decisions. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is thought to be one of the appropriate methods, which would meet the requirements in question. AHP enables individuals to structure complex problems in a form of hierarchy for evaluating quantitative and qualitative factors, and it addresses how to determine the relative importance of a set of alternatives in a multi-criteria decision-making environment. With this study, it is aimed to show that AHP is an effective quantitative evaluation method to be used for decisions on instructional software and it promises a candidate tool for instructional technology-related decisions. Key words: Instructional software, analytic hierarchy process, decision INTRODUCTION Humans have to make decisions to select or act on something for different purposes, ranging from simple to complex, conscious to unconscious. Furthermore, decisions are inevitable part of our daily lives, and their effects are certainly seen as they are expected or not. At one time or another, all of the individuals have wished that a difficult decision was easy to make, and there is a simple and strait forward way to follow up. For example, in purchasing a utility, there are many factors to consider, such as price, flexibility, brand name, support of manufacturer, etc. Clemen (1996) indicates that the factors such as complexity, uncertainty, multiple objectives, and different perspectives in decision making constitute the basic sources of difficulty. As a result, in this type of multi-factor decision-making, a person considers the various factors intuitively or subjectively, while feeling the need of a quantitative approach. Most of the decision-problems include a number of factors requiring multi-factor evaluation processes. Therefore, a decision and its analysis need systematic and structured guidance along with the necessary analytical tools that would lead to better decisions. Developments in computer and information technologies continue to give opportunities for designing advanced instructional software while entailing objective and technical evaluation methodologies. Occasionally, one of the hard decisions that the educators have to make is selecting a qualified instructional software. It is not possible to mention about an effective computer aided instruction with an unqualified instructional software as it gives cause for time and resource waste (Merrill, 1996). Functions of the courseware or type of the instructional software (drill, simulation, tutorial, problem solving, instructional game and etc) determine the underlying main evaluation criteria. These criteria are restricted to instructional design, content and technical features of the instructional software for the simplicity purposes of this study. The main point is that the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is thought to be one of appropriate methods, which would meet the requirements of instructional technology-related decisions. THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS AHP is a systematic multi-criteria evaluation method, which is developed by Saaty (1980), and has found a wide range of place in many solutions of different types of problems. AHP enables individuals to structure complex problems in a form of hierarchy for evaluating quantitative and qualitative factors, and it addresses how to determine the relative importance of a set of alternatives in a multi-criteria decision-making environment. It helps decision makers to determine the various factors with their weights, which are pointing out their importance, and laying out the hierarchy of the decision. First, the decision maker starts the overall procedures by defining the problem and setting up the goal related with the problem. Second, he or she determines the criteria reflecting the experts’ opinions. Third, the hierarchy is structured and reviewed. Forth,