According to the Hungarian Frame Curriculum, teaching informatics starts in grade 6 as a compulsory subject, with only one class a week. By this time students are regular smartphone and/or computer users, primarily applying trial-and-error based computer problem-solving methods. In this way they gain knowledge through their own experiences and observations, without any guidance. In the Frame Curriculum the first topic is file management, which is the basis of operating system use and further data-handling procedures. Due to the late introduction of informatics in schools and the diferent levels of knowledge that students bring into the classes this topic is dificult to teach. In addition, this topic is not suficiently emphasized and practiced, since both students and teachers consider it to consist of elementary, born-with knowledge. Consequently, students evaluate their knowledge as high, but practice does not justify this assessment. Our research team invented and applied a knowledge-transfer based webtable-datatable conversion process to cover file-, elementary data- and webpage-management. In order to quantify and prove the eficiency of the method, we tested grade 9 students in experimental and control groups, covering the topic with our novel and with traditional methods, respectively. During the research period, the students were tested in two rounds: in a pre-test, before they studied the topic to record what knowledge is brought into classes, and in a post-test, after the intervention. The test included tasks involving error message interpretation, recognizing file types based on default associations and conventions, explaining algorithms, and handling data files. This article presents the results of students in the pre-test administered in grade 9, starting their secondary education. It was found that when studying this topic with the trial-end-error methods, students do not build up knowledge in long-term memory, cannot see the algorithms behind fundamental
ifle management processes, and consequently cannot solve real-world problems efectively. These results clearly show that there is a need for changes in the approaches adopted to file management.
The Hungarian Frame Curricula [
The results of PISA 2009 Students On Line [
According to researchers [
The aim of this testing is to measure the students’ algorithmic and computational thinking skills through knowledge-transfer elements connected to file management at the beginning of their secondary education.
We tested first-year secondary school students’ file management skills in grade 9. The measurement involved two schools in Hungary. Considering all groups, 109 students completed the pre-test.
In 2018 a Mini-Competence Test [
Figure 2 reflects the results of the file management topic in the self-evaluation task. No significant diferences were revealed between grade 7 and 8 students. Most of them (79.06%) choose options 3, 4 or 5, (good, very good and excellent, respectively). Note, that 32.64% of the students selected the highest (5) option. Figure 3 shows the proportion of respondents who studied file management in school, with 14.72% of grade 7 and 8 students admitting that they did not study ifle management in school.
In the diagram on Figure 6, the correlations between the students’ answers for both their knowledge level and for the source of their knowledge are presented. Most of the students marking 3, 4, or 5 also indicated that a high proportion of them studied the topic in schools: 80%, 30.33%, 37.59%, respectively. Interestingly, those students who do not study file management in school are confident they have knowledge of this topic (mark 4-5: 40.04%). This leads to the conclusion that despite having studied the topic, the students do not necessarily feel that they have mastered the topic. 2.3. Measuring prior file management knowledge in grade 9 2.3.1. Tasks and results Task F1 (section 4) was about the interpretation of the Windows file rename warning message, where students had to choose from a number of given answers. Note that we allowed students to mark multiple answers, while only one of them was correct. 4.59% of the students marked only the correct answer; considering multiple selections, the correct answer was chosen in the lowest proportion (15.60%) (Figure 4). The high proportion of incorrect answers shows that students have no knowledge about data file types and the role of extensions.
This statement is further supported by the results of Task F2: “What happens when we double-click on a document file?”. Based on the answers, the students are only familiar with the last step (opening) of the 4-step process. This is in accordance with the results of Task F1, as students are not only unfamiliar with the roles of extensions, but with their connection with the operating system, as well.
In Task F3 the students had to provide an answer as to how a spreadsheet can be converted into a text file. Despite the task stating that only one answer was to be selected, 8.26% of the students ignored this instruction (Table 1). 38.53% of the students marked the correct answer together with others, while only 35.78% marked only the correct option (Table 1).
Task F4 inquired about the cut file operation: “What happens when you cut a file?.” Similarly to the previous tasks, the students had to choose their answers from the listed options. We allowed multiple selections even though that there was only one correct answer. 35.78% of the students completed this task successfully, while 35.90% marked the correct answer besides other options (Table 2).
In Task F5, the students had to decide the types of the listed files, considering their names and extensions. Based on Tasks F1 and F2, we have found that the students are not familiar with the definition of various extensions. The results of the current task support and extend this finding. This can be explained by the widespread use of the File Explorer present in Windows systems, where the extensions of the files are hidden by default.
We accepted the options listed in the second row of Table 3 as correct solutions (if the students only marked one answer). 37.31% of the students completed the task (Table 6). Based on the diagram shown in Figure 5, there were no students who provided correct answers for each file. Most of them recognized two or three ifle types correctly.
To analyze the connection between the answers, we conducted a correlation
analysis using Guilford’s approach [
We designed Task F6 to have multiple questions inquiring about the same knowledge items using difering approaches and phrasing. In this way we could gather data about the conscious choices and reliable knowledge of students. Each question could be answered with the following options: true, false or I don’t know (Table 4). In summary, 42.05% of the students completed the task correctly.
Table 5 shows the knowledge items required for solving Task F6. The students had to be familiar with the concept of extensions, assignment, file types and opening, editing and saving files. Table 5 shows which statements rely on what knowledge items. We expected correlations between answers for statements relying on the same items.
We completed a correlation analysis of the answers, considering the knowledge items required for the solution. The results show a weak correlation between the answers (below 0.4). Interestingly, we could not find any connection between the correlations and the knowledge items, as the results of the analysis yielded a randomized pattern.
To summarize the results for each task, Table 6 shows the correct completion rates of the file management test. The students completed the test with varying results. Considering the whole test, 32.34% of them completed it successfully, which is a lower proportion than the results expected on the basis of the self-assessment test in section 2.2 (p=0.000).
The results of the file management test have been converted to a scale of 0-5 (Figure 7) to make them comparable to the results of the Mini-Competence Test (Figure 6). Most of the students have confidence in their knowledge, despite the fact that in the file management test none of them reached knowledge level four.
ICT education start as a mandatory subject in grade 6 in Hungary with 1 class per week. By that time, students are regular users of smartphones, laptops, and/or desktop computers. It follows that they met and started learning the topic of file management by themselves. This leads to students showing unsupported confidence when the topic first emerges in grade 6, causing the class to move forward to diferent topics after a brief introduction. The results of the self-assessment part of the Mini-Competence Test show that students are overconfident about their knowledge. This shows a connection with the results of the PISA 2009 measurement.
The results of our file management test and measurement shows that the students lack basic knowledge in the topic, such as extensions, cut, file type, etc. As these items are frequently revisited and required in ICT education and in everyday computer use as well, this deficiency cannot be ignored. Furthermore, the knowledge students do have is fragmented, which resulted in randomized answers in the test. Moreover, their answers were inconsistent and showed no correlation in tasks requiring the same knowledge items.
The students (as digital natives) after completing primary education – with a minimum of 3 years of ICT education – do not possess the required level of knowledge of file management that would enable the conscious use of file operations and data handling. Therefore, the optimal and efective use of the available ICT lessons is recommended, but this can only be possible with novel approaches. The ifle management topic demands a greater emphasis within the wider subject area, accompanied by the correct and accurate use of the terminology.
Acknowledgements. This work was supported by the construction EFOP-3.6.3VEKOP-16-2017-00002. The project was supported by the European Union, coifnanced by the European Social Fund. Informatics Education for Pupils of all Ages. ISSEP 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7780. pp 43-56.