EVALUATING EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES OF SPREADSHEETS ACROSS THE CURRICULUM MODULES

The Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum (SSAC) library consists of activities to reinforce or teach quantitative literacy or mathematical concepts and skills in context. Each SSAC module consists of a PowerPoint presentation with embedded Excel spreadsheets. Each student works through a presentation, thinks about the in-context problem, figures out how to solve it mathematically, and builds spreadsheets to calculate and examine answers. SSAC modules were created by faculty from all over the country in various disciplines (e.g., marine science, chemistry, biology, geology, and geophysics).

To assess the effectiveness of SSAC modules, we surveyed Eckerd College undergraduates in two separate studies. In the summer of 2007, L. Wetzel worked with two undergraduate research assistants to generate pre- and post-tests for 10 SSAC modules. We hired 21 students who conducted 62 individual module assessments during their free time in exchange for modest stipends. In contrast, in the fall of 2007, 12 students assessed three modules in the context of an upper-level structural geology course. In both studies, students with a wide variety of academic interests and expertise showed improvements in quantitative literacy and Excel skills.

Based on our experiences in this study, we recommend that instructors wishing to use SSAC modules carefully match student ability with module difficulty, use more than one module over the course of a semester, ensure that students have realistic expectations before starting, and facilitate student use in a supervised setting. SSAC modules are freely available at the on-line Science Education Resource Center (serc.carleton.edu/sp/ssac/index.html), with instructor's versions available to educators upon request.