Browsing by Subject "Sähköinen ylioppilaskoe"

Finnish matriculation examination in biology transitioned into a digital examination from traditional pen-and-paper examination in spring of 2018 as a part of larger process aiming to digitalize the entire matriculation examination. Tthe requirements for the exam have also changed: in addition to subject knowledge, the digital examination also requires the candidate to also be master the digital skills outlined in the Finnish high school curriculum, for example the use of image- and data processing programs. It has been suggested hat candidates from higher socioeconomic background benefit more from digital skill teaching. It has also been shown that some teachers overestimate the digital skills of the students, omitting parts of the teaching process that are integral for learning. Tthis study examines whether the matriculation examination answers requiring digital skills differ from questions that can be answered without advanced digital skills. Statistically significantly worse performance in questions requiring digital skills might indicate digital skill teaching that is insufficient compared to the skill level required in matriculation examination. Insufficient teaching may disproportionately affect those from lower socioeconomic background. The data of this study consists of 30 full-length answers from matriculation examinations of spring 2018, autumn 2018 and spring 2019, for a total of 90 full-length answers. The data was a randomized sample provided by Ylioppilastutkintolautakunta (Finnish Matriculation Examination Board). The differences were analysed with Mann-Whitney U-test and Fisher’s z-transformation. The study found that questions requiring digital skills were statistically significantly more popular than questions that didn’t require digital skills. Although the level of cognitive processing outlined by Bloom’s Taxonomy was lower in questions requiring digital skills, there was no statistically significant difference in the success (measured by attained score) between the answers. According to results, the digital proficiency of the candidates was at a sufficient level to answer to the questions.. The study also speculates on factors that could explain the observed differences in answer popularity, cognitive depth and difficulty level of the questions.