Information and communications technologies today are used in virtually any university course when students prepare their papers. ICT is also needed after people are graduated from university and enter the job market. This author is an instructor in the field of informatics related to health care and social sciences at the Riga Stradins University. In practice, he has found that after completing informatics courses (IC) at the university level, students and practicing specialists at various levels find it hard to decide on what data processing method to use in order to interpret extracted results in the relevant area of specialisation. There are various data processing methods in the literature, presented individually and without adequate linkages. The author has found in practice that when such assignments are handled, there is closer linkage among data processing methods than the literature would suggest.
In this article, the authors deal with the following issues: (1) how assignments given during informatics courses at the university level can be integrated with the relevant area of specialisation by making use of professional standards, guidebooks to studies in other courses, descriptions and scholarly publications so as to help students and practicing specialists to take decisions on data processing methods, their use, and the interpretation of their results; (2) how to ensure that educational data related to the area of specialisation are obtained on the basis of statistics in scholarly publications; (3) what kind of content is to be used for students of health care and the social sciences; (4) how to choose methods to resolve data processing issues; (5) what are the recommended principles for evaluating the knowledge, skills and talents of students? The views that are presented in this paper are those of the authors or of other authors.
The goal of this literature study is to give some preliminary answers to the questions that aim to uncover the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) of Informatics Education, with focus on Programming. PCK has been defined as the knowledge that allows teachers to transform their knowledge of the subject into something accessible for their students. The core questions to uncover this knowledge are: what are the reasons to teach programming; what are the concepts we need to teach programming; what are the most common difficulties/misconceptions students encounter while learning to program; and how to teach this topic. Some of the answers found are, respectively: enhancing students' problem solving skills; programming knowledge and programming strategies; general problems of orientation; and possible ideal chains for learning computer programming. Because answers to the four questions are in a way not connected with each other, PCK being an unexplored field in Informatics Education, we need research based efforts to study this field.
The educational system in Austria is very multifaceted, and academic secondary schools represent an important part in it. This type of schools, in German called ``Gymnasium'', covers the age-group from 10 to 18 years and provides pupils and students with a broad and general education. For more than twenty years, informatics and computers have increasingly penetrated into secondary education. Austrian academic secondary schools have much freedom to cope with this challenging task within their autonomy. In this paper, a snapshot of the current situation is given with the main emphasis on the 9th grade. Only in this age-group, the ``PISA-age'', informatics is a compulsory subject. The implementation of additional IT/informatics classes at lower secondary level is exclusively the result of autonomous decisions in schools. Recently, a web-based nationwide online research has been conducted. In this paper some preliminary results are presented.
The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education is one important competence that student teacher should develop in their academic studies. To be capable of using ICT in education, students should study both pedagogical and technical issues. In order to affect student teachers' willingness to use ICT in education, more attention should be paid to their learning experiences. In this research, student teachers' attitudes toward the use of ICT in education were studied before and after the web-based course. Based on students' learning experiences, attitudes and evaluations of the web-based learning environment, dimensions of a successful web-based learning environment were examined. According to the results, ``motivation and accuracy'', ``learner-interface interaction'' and ``learner control and self-directed learning''are the dimensions of a learning environment that encourages student teachers' to use ICT in education. A well designed learning environment also gave a realistic overview and knowledge of the possibilities and limitations of the use of ICT in education.
This article analyses the informatics exam of secondary education in Lithuania. The research evaluates the correspondence of examination tasks to the exam program and its aims. Then, it studies the equality of examination variants. The article also discusses the clarity of the exam questions and instructions as well as the organization of the exam and the objectivity of evaluation criteria.