Resources designed and used in statistics education in Bachelor of Technology courses in France

The French education system has numerous higher education institutions with various specializations. IUTs, established in the late 1960s, provide specific training. These schools offer three-year, practice-oriented education that enables students to work or pursue a master's degree. They are widely accessible and popular, even in small towns, and offer 24 nationally defined curricula in two areas: science and management. The teaching of statistics in IUTs is unique since it is present in almost all specialties. Studying the teaching and learning of statistics in IUTs enables us to comprehend didactic phenomena in a teaching system that has been established for a long time throughout the country and is a privileged field for meeting teachers whose activity has been tried and tested and is part of a continuum. This research explores the factors that influence the format and nature of the resources designed and utilized in these lessons, how they are integrated into teaching, and what functions they serve. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven mathematics teachers responsible for statistics courses. Often coming from secondary education, these teachers had to adjust the content taught to the objectives and teaching situations typical of French higher education

Számítógépes problémamegoldás

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Factors that impact student usage of the learning management system in Qatari schools

In an attempt to enhance teacher and student performance in school, a learning management system (LMS) known as Knowledge-Net (K-Net) was introduced in Qatari independent schools. (All public schools in Qatar have transformed to independent schools; the independent schools model is similar to the charter school system in North America.) An LMS is a tool that organizes and regulates classroom administrative tasks, supports teachers and students in the teaching and learning process, and informs parents of their children’s progress and school activities. Despite the benefits of the LMS, research studies indicate that its use by students has been limited because of a number of manipulative and non-manipulative factors that can influence behavior. This study explores the factors that impact student use of the LMS K-Net in Qatari independent schools. Quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire that was administered to students in 37 schools. A total of 1,376 students responded to the questionnaire. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect qualitative data that helped to confirm the results of the quantitative data and to provide additional insight on students’ perspectives regarding the use of the LMS. The results point to a strong relation between ICT knowledge and LMS usage. They suggest that the more ICT knowledge students have, the less prone they are to using the LMS. Attitudinal barriers were not predictive of usage. Student usage was strongly correlated to teacher and parent usage. This study is informative in evaluating LMS usage in Qatari schools.ictQATAR Grant (Grant # QUEX SCICT 09 1011) and Qatar University Internal Grant (Grant # QUDF-EDU-10 11 4)

Spreadsheet misconceptions, spreadsheet errors

A 2011/2012-es tanévben elindítottuk az Algoritmikus és Alkalmazói Készségek Tesztelése című projektünket, amelyben a Debreceni Egyetem Informatikai Karának elsőéves informatikus hallgatóit és gyakorló informatika tanárok informatikai ismereteit teszteltük. A cikkünkben a táblázatkezelési tesztek eredményeit ismertetjük, mivel korább már bizonyításra került, hogy a táblázatkezelői dokumentumok 95–60%-a hibás. A kutatásaink eredményei bizonyítják, hogy a táblázatkezelés során jelentkező hiányosságok nemcsak általános probléma, hanem az informatika szakos hallgatók és tanárok sem rendelkeznek megfelelő ismeretekkel. Elemzéseink során azt tapasztaltuk, hogy a népszerű felületkezelési módszer használata magyarázza a hibák nagy részét. Az eredmények ismertében a számítógépes problémák megoldására bevezettünk egy mély-szerkezetű metakognitív megközelítést. Az általunk bevezetett, a számítógépes tevékenységek megkülönböztetésére alkalmas kétféle metakognitív megközelítést – TAEW (trial-and-error wizard-based) és CAAD (computer-algorithmic- and debugging-based) – elhelyeztük Case és Gunstone metakognitív rendszerében. A cikk részletesen ismerteti a mély-szerkezetű megközelítés egy lehetséges megvalósítását és megmutatja, hogy lényegesen hatékonyabb a felületkezelési megközelítéseknél. In the academic year of 2011/2012 Testing Algorithmic and Application Skills Project was launched to test the knowledge of Informatics of the first year students of the faculty of Informatics and teachers of Informatics in schools. This article focuses on spreadsheet problems, since previous studies have shown that 95-60% of the spreadsheet documents carry errors. Our tests clearly show that not just in general, but the students of Informatics have very limited spreadsheet knowledge, and so the teachers of Informatics. The article details the students’ and teachers’ results in the project and tries to find explanations for their underachievement. It was found that the widely used and commercialized surface approach methods for solving spreadsheet problems are the main source of the failure. It was also realized that there is a need for the categorization of the computer-related activities into the system of metacognitive approaches of Case and Gunstone. We introduced one surface (TAEW, trial-and-error wizardbased) and one deep (CAAD, computer-algorithmic- and debugging-based) approach method into the already accepted system. The article provides the details of our deep approach metacognitive method and its results, proving that it is more effective than the previously accepted surface approach methods