Students' spreadsheet knowledge - Differences between perceived and real knowledge

Abstract

Teaching Computer Science in higher education is imperative, even though today's students can be considered to be part of generation Z where technology is an essential part of everyday life. The primary objective of the authors was to examine the perceived and actual knowledge of spreadsheet applications of students entering higher education. A questionnaire and a practical test have therefore been composed. In the questionnaire, students were asked to provide information concerning their previous IT studies and rate their knowledge of word processing, spreadsheets and database management. During the practical, students were asked to solve an Excel exercise taken from a secondary school Computer Science final exam at standard level. In respect to the results of the practical test there were differences between the perceived and actual knowledge of students' spreadsheet applications. In respect to the actual results, we found that half of the students' performance was below 20 per cent, and overall, nearly 85 per cent of them had completed the test with scores under 40 per cent. Our analysis also demonstrated that students that had graduated in Information Technology achieved significantly better results.