(108c) Deliberate Practice of Spreadsheet Skills Using Randomized, Auto-Graded Problems

Spreadsheets are a foundational tool for engineers, engineering students, and many others. Spreadsheet tools, including Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, have many common formulas, functions, and other tasks across versions and platforms. Here, an interactive textbook from zyBooks provides learners the opportunity to practice spreadsheet skills. On one hand, content is delivered through interactive components that include animations as well as multiple choice and matching questions. On the other hand, executing spreadsheet skills using 100+ auto-graded, randomized questions examines the deliberate practice framework. Using this type of online homework, fraction correct regardless of attempts, number of attempts before correct, and number of attempts after correct provided metrics across several cohorts. Content was grouped as General spreadsheet skills, Functions, or Advanced skills. General spreadsheet skills and Functions generally showed greater median correct, ranging from 76 to 90%, than Advanced spreadsheet skills, which led to median correct of 68 to 81%. Median correct also varied by question types and order, which aligned the expert author’s intent to scaffold the questions. Finally, a hypothesis was tested: Adding a Copy sheet feature to the auto-graded questions would encourage deliberate practice and improve fraction correct between cohorts. For one cohort, a statistically significant increase with large effect size in fraction correct between cohorts was found, which supports the hypothesis. Results from a recently published paper in Advances in Engineering Education will be enhanced by data from more recent cohorts in this contribution.