Diagrama de flujo general del proceso de investigación

In step 2, Kirkpatrick suggest to measure the learning outcome of each trainee, so that quantitative results can be obtained. To best do this, one should have a before-and-after approach. Because I did not have the time or the knowledge of who would attend a course at RH, it was not possible to administer a questionnaire prior to the observation. And because it is such a small sample group it is difficult to get any statistical numbers out of these findings.

I have therefore tried to get an impression of what both the participants at RH and the students at Oslo Katedralskole have learned, by observation and questionnaires. The actual learning is quite difficult to capture.

6.4.1 Do the participants have a good enough foundation to

attend the course?

To partake at a basic Excel course at RH one needs only knowledge of basic use of computers. Even so, the instructor starts the course with a thorough introduction of computers. The course catalogue states that it is useful to be familiar with the use of Word and simple file organisation, but it is not necessary since the participant will be taught this in the course.

Do the participants have the mathematical and/or statistical foundation to learn the program? The spreadsheet is an aid to do calculations, but to do this, it is important to know how to proceed to get the correct answer. To put it simple: A calculator is no help in a mathematical exam if you do not know how to do the calculations. If you do not know which variables to use and how to use them, it is difficult to get the correct answer. The calculator will not give any hints on how to do the calculations.

Brigitte Heitmann, when asked what she thought was a problem for the participants, answered that they did not have the necessary knowledge of mathematics and statistics needed to make Excel an aid. One participant states in the questionnaire that he feels a need to read up on statistics. Another participant answered that she would like to have learned more about cells in the course. This was the first thing the instructor explained and cells were used throughout the course. It might be that she did not

Chapter 6: Findings

have the basic computer knowledge needed even though she states that she felt that she had sufficient knowledge about Windows and Word before attending the course.

When observing the students at Oslo Katedralskole, I experienced that the most frequent question was where to place the variables in the table they were working on. For example; they were working on an assignment where two boys had bought a stereo. After a while these two boys wanted to sell the stereo. The assignment was to figure out what they lost financially when they sold the stereo. The students had all the information they needed, but their problem was what to do with it. Not only had they problems with where filling out the correct variable in the spreadsheet, but also how to do the computations. But they did not seem to have problems using Excel. They seemed confident when using the spreadsheet program and were not afraid of trying out new buttons or scroll-down menus.

The students used two books, one textbook and one exercise book. Often the textbook had explanation on how to solve the problem in the exercise book. The examples were of course a b different from the exercises, but similar enough to give hints as how to solve the exercises.

This suggests that the students needed to learn more of the mathematical foundation to be able to do the exercises on their own. But the teacher explained that the class’ sole object was to teach them just that. It was about personal economics, economy for small communities like a band and a little bit about the Norwegian economy, and not a class for learning Excel.

6.4.2 From my questionnaires

The questionnaire contained four questions to evaluate the learning outcome for the participants. It was administered approximately three months after the course. The questions were the same for both the ground level course and the higher level course.

The first two questions were related to, function and references (cell location), and directly connected to what the participants had learned during the course. With the two questions I wanted to find out if the

Chapter 6: Findings

participants knew how to add numbers with Excel, and also if they remembered to use the cell location when doing so. The first question was directed towards the use of the function SUM. Several assignments during the course had been about the use of this function.

The sentence in parenthesis is a hint to make them think through the question before answering, and for the second question on addition, just to clarify that the answer could be in both the cell location and the function line. The observation showed that some participants preferred to write directly in the cell while others wrote in the function line. The two examples in the first question are quite similar, the function in model “A” uses the function SUM while the function in model “B” pictures the way the computation would, for example, be written on a calculator or on paper. Because there were only two alternatives and I wanted to avoid any guessing, I asked them to state a reason for their choice.

1. Which model is the best? A or B. Please state a reason for your