The effectiveness of the Webtable-Datatable Conversion approach

Abstract

Informatics education in Hungary is based on the National Base Curriculum (NAT) and the Frame Curricula. These documents contain the subjects (sciences), the number of classes for each subject and the requirements for each grade. According to the NAT2012, Informatics as a compulsory school subject is introduced in Grade 6. The filemanagement is among the first topics that students must learn according to the Frame Curricula. However, this is not their first encounter with filemanagent, since by the age of 12 most of the students are already active users of digital tools, and associated with the false assumptions of digital natives. Due to the late introduction, the filemanagement is one of the most neglected topics in informatics education. Nevertheless, this is one of the most important topics, since it is essential for further development in handling digital products. Our research group developed the Webtable-Datatable Conversion (WDC) highmathability method to teach filemanagement. This approach not only focuses on the main file operations but handles real world problems which require firm algorithm construction and datamanagement. The aim of the present study is to measure the effectiveness of the WDC approach with Grade 9 students, where the comparison of groups studying with the traditional and the WDC methods was carried out.