Abstract:

The paper focuses on the evolution of students’ learning in a basic IT course, taught in the first year of the BA level, and the impact of the educational ‘bonuses’ we have introduced. The course covers basic IT and Internet services characteristics and principles, as well as the most important moments in IT evolution. The course combines classical teaching methods with interactive methods and e-learning tools. The educational bonuses were introduced in the academic year 2018-2019 and involved supplemental requests within one of the practical assignments. The evaluation is performed along the academic years 2016-2017, 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. We study the involvement of the students in solving the supplemental requests and the impact on their grades within the academic year 2018-2019 compared to previous ones, as well as feed-back issues.

We briefly overview the course characteristics, which have been described in a previous paper. For the student feed-back analysis, we used the data provided by the official UBB teacher evaluation tool, which is included in our university’s academic information system AcademicInfo. The results obtained in the academic year 2018-2019 are compared with the ones obtained in the previous two academic years (which have been analyzed within a previous paper), both for the course and the seminar (the practical activity).

Within the academic year 2018-2019, the educational material that had been previously available on UBBonline e-learning platform was copied on the faculty’s moodle system because the integrated platform is no longer provided with maintenance support. We emphasize, in this respect, the utility of developing learning components interchange tools, which is one of our research areas. We briefly present the e-learning tools that we have used and added on the faculty’s moodle e-learning system and the exam requirements.

During the academic year 2018-2019, around half of the enrolled students involved themselves in solving a supplemental practical requirement (for the blog assignment), which was graded as a bonus (1 supplemental point to the corresponding grade) for one of the practical assignments. We noticed a genuine emulation among the students involved in solving the supplemental requirement and an increased interest towards completing it. Based in the results we have obtained, we consider that the supplemental task may be taken into account as a potential solution to an increased student involvement in the educational process, since it proved to have a good educational and psychological impact.

We analyze the results obtained by the students in the academic year 2018-2019 and we compare them with the ones obtained along the previous 2 academic years, discussing the impact of the supplemental task. Solving the supplemental requirement had a beneficial impact on the students’ grades. The course feed-back results were similar to the ones obtained in the previous academic year, slightly higher.

Using UBB’s teacher evaluation tool, students have graded the course with an average around 4- 4.1, on a scale 1-5, where 1 is very poor and 5 is very good. The results obtained in the academic year 2018-2019 are comparable with the ones obtained in the previous years, yet slightly higher. Students express a general positive feed-back towards the course content, the acquired knowledge and blended learning teaching methods, leading to an overall good to very good rating of the course

Keywords:

Basic IT course, student feed-back, teaching IT concepts, blended learning, interactive educational resources, educational bonuses, educational impact.