There has been a lot of talk on the Comp-Studies mailing list about including problem solving questions in the Computer Applications Technology Gr 12 national exam papers.
I believe a problem solving question is one which has features which the learners have been taught, but presented in a different way which requires thinking ‘out of the box’.
With that in mind I have been looking at the Study Opportunities papers as I have been using old papers for revision. Currently I am going over the Excel sections of old papers with my Gr 10s and 11s.
In the 2006 Gr 10 Pug paper, question 1, the learners had to sort the names in order according to surname. They needed to do a copy and paste of surnames into a new column for surnames. They could have copied and sorted each record individually but that would have taken ages. None of my Gr 10s or 11s managed to do on their own quickly.
In the 2008 Gr 10 Snakes/Crocodile paper , question 4, there was such a lovely problem solving question which none of my Gr 11s managed to do on their own. They did not realise that the value was text.
In the 2009 Gr 10 Computer Assistance paper, question 3.1, you have to find and copy the details of those doing the Web2 tools course to a word document. The learners should have done a sort, to find those people and then copied the block of records. None of my Gr 10s managed without my help.
I am doing revision now to get the learners’ minds thinking flexibly and ready for the exams. I am most distressed at how they cannot think ‘out of the box’ and solve problems. The learners know the skills but have difficulty applying them. I am not sure how common this problem is.
I believe a problem solving question is one which has features which the learners have been taught, but presented in a different way which requires thinking ‘out of the box’.
With that in mind I have been looking at the Study Opportunities papers as I have been using old papers for revision. Currently I am going over the Excel sections of old papers with my Gr 10s and 11s.
In the 2006 Gr 10 Pug paper, question 1, the learners had to sort the names in order according to surname. They needed to do a copy and paste of surnames into a new column for surnames. They could have copied and sorted each record individually but that would have taken ages. None of my Gr 10s or 11s managed to do on their own quickly.
In the 2008 Gr 10 Snakes/Crocodile paper , question 4, there was such a lovely problem solving question which none of my Gr 11s managed to do on their own. They did not realise that the value was text.
In the 2009 Gr 10 Computer Assistance paper, question 3.1, you have to find and copy the details of those doing the Web2 tools course to a word document. The learners should have done a sort, to find those people and then copied the block of records. None of my Gr 10s managed without my help.
I am doing revision now to get the learners’ minds thinking flexibly and ready for the exams. I am most distressed at how they cannot think ‘out of the box’ and solve problems. The learners know the skills but have difficulty applying them. I am not sure how common this problem is.
I am glad that the Study Opportunity papers have those problem solving features. Maybe they need more however I have only checked a small portion of the papers.
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