Abstract:

Contemporary school should prepare Next generation students for the modern labor market. Given this, the inevitable is change in the teaching environment in which the computer science teacher needs to adapt their teaching methods to best accommodate the students with more demanding teaching content. Software simulation is a new teaching method that finds its application in computer science thru which student in the simulated digital environment can be controlled in the process of acquirement of the required knowledge and skills in comparison to classical teaching methods which are used in computer science.

The research was conducted in the school year 2016/17 at the Administrative High School in Zagreb on fourth grade students who were divided into a control (N=27) and an experimental group (N=26), and were based on the topic Databases during the seven teaching hours. In the first phase of the study, the pre-examination of both groups was performed and it was found that there was no statistically significant difference between the student knowledge at the beginning of research. During the second phase of the study, an experiment was carried out in a way that the students who belonged to the control group were using classical teaching methods, while the group of students belonging to the experimental group was using the software simulation method. The final phase of the study, post-examination, showed a statistically significant difference in the developed skill in the students who belonged to the experimental group relative to the students who belonged to the control group.

Keywords:

Software simulation, computer science, secondary education.