The purpose of the Guidelines is to promote quality in educational software. They do so in two ways. First, developers can use them to ensure that their products are of high instructional quality during development and evaluation of their products. Second, end users can compare educational software programs with the Guidelines to recognize quality products. For the second goal, the authors have derived validated rating instruments for use by instructional design experts and software end users. The Guidelines are also not domain-specific. Despite the fact that they have been developed in a dental standards committee, they are purposely conceived and formulated to be general. Thus, the Guidelines are applicable to any domain, not just the dental or medical one.