THE TENNESSEE COMPUTER LITERACY PILOT PROJECT: A DESCRIPTIVE AND EVALUATIVE STUDY

A pilot project in computer literacy was implemented in fourteen school districts across the state in order to assess the value and effectiveness of a fifteen-lesson curriculum which was developed as part of a ten-point statewide Better Schools Program. Subsequently decisions were to be made pertaining to the implementation of the program throughout all the school districts in the state during the 1984-85 school year. Data were gathered on students and teachers by means of two surveys: (a) Attitude Toward Computers Survey, consisting of eighteen items (Attitude I), and (b) Minnesota Computer Literacy and Awareness Assessment, containing another set of twenty attitude questions (Attitude II), a knowledge test composed of fifty-two items, and selected questions about the respondents to allow for group comparisons. Uncorrelated t-tests revealed mean differences which were significant at .01 level for the knowledge and attitude scales for the following four comparisons of student groups: knowledge, experimental group vs. in-school control group and experimental group vs. out-of-school control group; attitude, experimental group vs. in-school control group and experimental group vs. out-of-school control group. Six of the seven null hypotheses were rejected at the .01 level of significance. The hypothesis that was not rejected pertained to pre and post attitude scores of teachers in a five-day literacy workshop. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that many variables, some of which are beyond the direct control of the school, influence a student\u27s attitude and knowledge about computers. Recommendations included expansion of the pilot project to become a statewide program in 1984-85, development of fifteen advanced lessons, further analysis of the data through factor analysis of the survey items along with discriminant analysis of extremely high and low scores, analysis of the knowledge scale scores after categorizing the fifty-two knowledge items according to the six strands in the curriculum, comparison studies of comparable survey data from other regions of the nation, and follow-up interviews with students and teachers who were in the Computer Skills Next Program