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• The requirements in statistics education – comparison of PISA mathematical tasks and tasks from the mathematical textbooks in the field of statistics

  263-275

  Dubravka Glasnović Gracin

  Predrag Vuković

  Views:

  111

  This work presents the results of the analysis of both PISA items and Croatian mathematical textbooks in the field of statistics.
  The analysis shows that PISA's released statistics problems have in many ways different mathematical requirements from the requirements of textbook problems in the statistics chapters, with respect to the mathematical activities, complexity and in the forms of questions. The textbook analysis shows that mathematical examples and problems often require operation and interpretation skills on a reproductive or connections level. Statistics textbook problems are given in the closed-answer form. The results also show that while PISA puts strong emphasis on the statistics field, in the current Croatian curriculum this field is barely present. These discrepancies in requirements and portion of statistics activities surely affect the results of Croatian pupils on PISA assessment in the field of mathematical literacy.

• Cultivating algorithmic thinking: an important issue for both technical and HUMAN sciences

  107-116

  Zoltán Kátai

  Lehel István Kovács

  Zoltán Kása

  Gyöngyvér Márton

  Kinga Fogarasi

  Ferenc Fogarasi

  Views:

  119

  Algorithmic thinking is a valuable skill that all people should master. In this paper we propose a one-semester, algorithm-oriented computer science course for human science students. According to our experience such an initiative could succeed only if the next recipe is followed: interesting and practical content + exciting didactical methods + minimal programming. More explicitly, we suggest: (1) A special, simple, minimal, pseudo-code like imperative programming language that integrates a graphic library. (2) Interesting, practical and problem-oriented content with philosophical implications. (3) Exciting, human science related didactical methods including art-based, inter-cultural elements.

• Recalling calculus knowledge

  55-70

  Ljerka Jukić Matić

  Views:

  90

  The main purpose of educational system is not only that the students perform well at the exam, but to remember the learnt material to some degree some time after the learning. This paper investigates students' retained knowledge, focusing mainly on topics concerning derivatives and differentiation, and examines the effect of re-learning in a short period of time. Results indicate that retained knowledge should be taken into consideration in instructional design and curriculum planning for the sequencing courses.

• Facilitating class attendance to improve student achievements

  77-90

  Ye Sun

  Weifeng Chen

  Views:

  78

  Many studies have revealed that attendance is strongly associated with students' achievements, and have proposed different strategies to improve students' attendance. However, there are few studies investigating how to efficiently take students' attendance – the key component to improve students' attendance. Taking attendance manually is inefficient since it will consume part of the limited class time. This paper describes the design and the implementation of an online attendance system that is currently used in classes at West Virginia University and California University of Pennsylvania. Examples of the system are provided online. Implementation codes of the system are shared, which can be used to teach computer science courses such as Web Programming or Client-Server Script Languages.