Assessing Student Performance in a Theoretical Computer Literacy Course

Abstract

Students studying to become Chartered Accountants at a large South African Open Distance Learning (ODL) institution are failing an introductory course in computer literacy at an alarming rate. Over a period of five years the responsible lecturers proposed various methods to students on how to study and prepare for the examination of the subject, with some degree of success. The literature suggests that the problem emerges even before school level or at least as early on as primary school education. In an ODL environment students are faced with the absence of a classroom environment, a facility which many students, fresh from school, still have a need for. However, having marked a few thousand scripts twice a year over the past five years, the lecturers identified a number of sub problems all part of the larger problem of students having to use English as their second or third language to master a content subject. Other problems include ignorance of the study material and an inability to determine the relevance of a formulated answer to a question.