Students’ Perceived Ability in the Use of a Computer Application in a Community Outreach Project

Abstract

Students from a disadvantaged background in a community outreach project often do not have the opportunity to gain knowledge on computer applications (for instance, word processing and spreadsheets) at school level. In the project being reported on here, the students’ perception of their ability in the use of a spreadsheet program was measured with the use of a pre- and post training questionnaire. A further comparison was drawn between the students’ perception of their ability and the mark achieved in the summative assessment at the end of the training. The aims of the project were to establish whether: 1) training in the use of a spreadsheet program affected the students’ perception of their own ability; 2) the perceived ability of students differed from their actual ability; and 3) the assumption that students from a privileged community may overestimate their ability and that students from underprivileged communities may underestimate their ability in the use of computer applications, is valid. The findings indicate that the students’ perceptions did change after training and that their perceived and actual ability do differ. However, the disadvantaged students from this study also overestimated their ability in the use of a computer program. To improve the ability of students, they should gain basic mathematical, accounting and language skills before they are introduced to a spreadsheet program.