Abstract:

Teaching Computer Science in higher education is necessary, despite the fact that today’s students belong to the Z generation, for whom technology is an integral part of life. The author’s primary objective was to examine both the perceived and real competences of freshmen students in regards to spreadsheets applications. During the assessment, students were asked to solve an Excel exercise from the graduation exam at standard level in Computer Science. We observed that there is a big gap between the perceived and real knowledge of spreadsheet applications. After learning spreadsheets for eight weeks, the students were asked to retake the same assessment. Moreover, after 4 months – at the beginning of the next semester – we asked our students again to retake the same exam and we compared all the results. 164 students participated in this survey, but only 106 completed all three. While 74% of the students achieved a very poor (below 40%) result during the first assessment, this decreased to 5% by the second time, but increased to 24% at the third. The percentage of very good results (above 80%) were first at 5%, then grew to 41% and, finally fell to 11%.
We can conclude that, when it comes to exams, if students do not put their knowledge to use, they may forget it in a matter of weeks.

Keywords:

Higher Education, Spreadsheets, Computer Science, Education, National Curriculum.