TEACHERS' ASSESSMENT AND STUDENTS' SELF-ASSESSMENT ON THE STUDENTS' SPREADSHEET KNOWLEDGE

In the academic year of 2011/2012 a program was launched at the Faculty of Informatics of the University of Debrecen, Hungary to test the spreadsheet knowledge of the freshmen. This year and in the following 695 students were tested, altogether. In advance to the academic test a self-assessment test was completed by the students, where on a 0-5 Likert scale the students were asked to evaluate their spreadsheet. In the follow-up section of the program elementary and secondary school teachers of Informatics and Computer Sciences were given a similar questioner. The questioner contained the students' test and additional questions in connection with the students' performance and the importance of the task. The students' results in the spreadsheet tasks reached 20% neither of the two years. The results of our research, however, clearly indicate that both the self-assessment values and the teachers' evaluation values significantly overestimate the students' performance. Comparing our results to previously tested self-assessment evaluations the students' overestimation on self-assessment is not surprising, it is a well-established phenomenon. However, the overestimation of the students' results by the teachers is rather alarming, since it means that the teachers of Informatics are not aware of their students' knowledge.