The effectiveness of software simulation in informatics education

Pongrac Pavlina, Ana. (2018). The effectiveness of software simulation in informatics education. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Information Science.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij informacijskih i komunikacijskih znanosti) [mentor Lasić-Lazić, Jadranka].

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Abstract

The modern labor market requires changes in knowledge and skills which should be acquired in contemporary teaching environment. Changed teaching environment is reflected in the changes of the teaching content, the student's characteristics and the teacher's teaching skills. Informatics teachers, in relation to other teachers, in their teaching dominantly use ICT tools (95%) and the tool they use the least is a simulation software (3%). Software simulation is a new teaching method that finds its application in the digital environment in which a student faces a problem or situation from a real life. The main goal of this study is to determine the effectiveness of the application of software simulation method for acquiring knowledge and developing skills in informatics education. The content of the doctoral thesis is divided into the following chapters: Introduction, Classical Educational Paradigm, Digital Learning Environment, Research, Conclusion, Literature, Contributions, List of Images and Tables and Curriculum Vitae. In the introductory part of the paper the author explains the motivation for conducting this research. The chapter Classical Educational Paradigm describes a classical educational system through elaboration of concept of education, supplemented by the notion of teaching, which is the backbone of this chapter, and is further embodied through the teaching of information technology itself. Within the same chapter, the factors of the didactic triangle - student, teacher and teaching content – which are related to the concept of learning and teaching. The student's role is studied through theories of learning, while the role of the teacher is elaborated with regard to the skills required for each teacher to master. During teaching process the student and the teacher work together on teaching content. For this reason, the elaboration of all the stages of the teaching lesson is presented, including the teaching methods, the principles and the systems (forms) of the teaching work. The third chapter, titled Digital Learning Environment, describes educational system through a strategic reflection on modern education. The key change affecting the modern educational system is the issue of a digital educational revolution that puts e-learning into its centre as a new educational environment that is elaborated in more detail on the basis of instructional design in which its specific place finds teaching technology that expands classical didactic triangle to didactic quadrangle. This changed learning environment caused the emergence of a new teaching method that found its specific application in the informatics education. With this in mind, the method of software simulation is presented in detail as a new way of teaching in informatics education. The author associated the realization of this teaching method in informatics education with the devolopment of digital educational materials. In the fourth chapter entitled Research, the elaboration of the research part of the work is presented in such a way that the aim of this paper is systematically described, hypotheses derived from the presented goal and a detailed research plan is presented with description of research subjects and the research instruments developed for each of the three mentioned phases research. At the end of this chapter, the results are systematically presented in pre-test, post-test phases and results in total. The conclusion is the fifth chapter in which the author brings concluding considerations resulting from the conducted research. Chapter six provides a list of used literature. The list of 226 units of literature is listed. Chapter Appendices states 12 of the contributions used in the research part of the paper itself. Chapter List of Tables and Images, contains list of tables (43), images (40) and graphs (5) presented in this paper. Chapter nine presents author's Curriculum Vitae.

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