Abstract:

The development of knowledge-based economy should be the main tool for achieving the long-term competitiveness of national economies and so it is in the Slovak Republic. There are many strategies to achieve this goal. One of them is to increase the ratio of highly educated people in our society. Since the reform, when the number of students has become one of the most important indicators for allocating money from relevant category of the national budget, it is natural that the universities want to enroll more students to their studies. Consequently, when a bigger portion of the population is to be enrolled to studies, it is necessary to weaken selection criteria. So, the average level of students' knowledge quality is decreasing. Many researches from our region have shown that this is a problem especially in the field of mathematics and applied mathematics. Many universities have had to adapt to this situation by reducing their requirements or by introduction of supplementary mathematical courses and seminars – or by some combination of both approaches.

Informatization of society is also one of the strategies to develop a knowledge-based economy. The penetration of information and communication technology in last 30 years was enormous. Owning of a personal computer before this period was uncommon while current students grew up on these technologies. Because of this fact, the range of knowledge in the sphere of informatics should be constantly improving or at least not decreasing in contrast to mathematics.

The objective of this paper is to examine the evolution of students’ knowledge in the subject of informatics in the field of study of Economics and Business Management at the Faculty of Operation and Economics of Transport and Communications (University of Žilina) in last 10 years, and to find out if the positive development of the information technology penetration can reverse the negative consequences of decreasing selection criteria of the admission process.

The results of our survey consist of two parts. The first part is based on a summary of overall evaluations in the subject of Informatics in the last decade. The second part deals with the summary of achieved results in practical tests, i.e. solving tasks using basic office applications.

We use basic statistical indicators to describe the level of the students' knowledge in observed academic years. The linear regression method is used to describe the trend of students' knowledge.

Keywords:

Informatics, evaluation, grade, examination term, test.