Itaca project - Students Learning Path in Hungary

8/10/2019 Itaca project - Students Learning Path in Hungary

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ITACAIT ADMINISTRATOR COMPETENCES

DEVELOPMENT AND ACKNOWLEDGE

LIFELONG LEARNING PROGRAMME

LEONARDO DA VINCI - TRANSFER OF INNOVATION

2012-1-IT1-LEO05-02806

D.7-2

ITACA LEARNINGPATH FOR STUDENTS

IN HUNGARY

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This plan reflects the views only of the author, and the

Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein



ITACA Project site 2012-1-IT1-LEO05-02806 http://www.itaca-project.eu

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Document Title“Hungarian Courses for Teachers”

Author(s): Mária Hartyányi (Prompt), Ildikó Balassa (Számalk), Dr.László Papócsi (GAK)

Confidentiality Status: Public




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INDEX

1. The Project.............................................................................................................................4

1.1 Training activities .............................................................................................................4

1.2 ITACA Objectives from Hungarian point of view .............................................................4

1.3 Partners in Hungary ........................................................................................................5

2. Students Training in Hungary..............................................................................................6

2.1 ITACA Work Phases ........................................................................................................6

2.2 Summary of the pilot ........................................................................................................6

3. Experiences, conclusions in SZÁMALK High School .......................................................7

3.1 Analysis of the results of the official ITAF exams............................................................7

4. IT Administrator learning path for students .....................................................................11

5. Adaptation of EUCIP resources for students ...................................................................11

5.1 IT Administrator Fundamental practicing test for the students’ pilot .............................11

5.2 Hungarian tools for the VALIDATION: ITAF QTB (Question Test Base): 300 questions+ answers, documents for the paper-based exams ......................................................12




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1. THE PROJECT

1.1 Training activities

The following image shows the training activities scheduled for the ITACA Project. The grey boxesrefer to the activities for teachers, the lobster-colored to the activities addressed to the students.

1.2 ITACA Objectives from Hungarian point of viewIn Hungary a modernization process of the vocational educational system started in 2012 with themain objectives as follows:

• transparency, transferability and comparability of national qualifications;• support lifelong learning;• reinforce the use of learning outcomes in standard-setting, curricula and assessment;• to make Hungarian qualifications easier to understand abroad and make them more

comparable, more transparent;• to improve the relevance of qualifications in the labour market;• to support the career orientation and counselling system.




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As a results the ongoing developments in the Hungarian VET are:• Renewing the National Qualification Registry.• Develop learning outcome oriented, modularised syllabuses.• Development of Hungarian Qualification Framework (MKKR).• Establish more and more dual VET system (like in Germany.• Introduce ECVET system (presently only in HE).• Establish comprehensive QM systems in IVET and CVET.

These aims were highly represented in ITACA project aims and objectives:"ITACA promotes the adoption by the schools of the EUCIP IT ADMINISTRATOR competence andcertification system as a tool and opportunity to:

1. overcome self-referring to meet standards established in the market and an externalcertification;

2. provide transparency and recognition to training paths by specifying them in terms of"learning outcomes;

3. adopt teaching methods in which the acquisition of knowledge and skills takes place in project activities and work-based learning to develop real expertise”.

The correlation between the Hungarian and ITACA aims helped the Hungarian partners to bedeeply involved into the two years long collaboration, and to exploit the results not only during butalso after the project period.

1.3 Partners in Hungary

The Hungarian partnership involved partners the formal vocational educational system and fromthe adult education providing certificates on the field of IT as well. Hungarian ITACA partners:

• Hungarian vocational training centre in the informatics field: Számalk-Szalézi VocationalEducational Highschool.

• PROMPT-H Prompt-H IT Training, Trade and Service Limited, a Hungarian organizationspecialized in IT training and certifications (ECDL Test Centre).

• GAK, Hungarian organization founded to offer services to companies in the agro-industrialsector. While Assintel has a systemic vision of the informatics professional profiles, CNALombardy and GAK provide the project with a broad view of the needs of all those smallbusinesses that require people able to manage their computer system, which is preciselythe function of an IT Administrator.




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2. STUDENTS TRAINING IN HUNGARY

2.1 ITACA Work Phases

According to the ITACA workplan the main tasks of the Hungarian partners were related to thework packages as follows:

2.2 Summary of the pilot

The Hungarian teachers taking part in the cascade ITACA pilot carried out a survey with theirstudents to learn how far they were interested in obtaining an EU level recognised IT certification,and the result was highly inspiring: most of them answered: “YES”. The idea of the teachers was,that the students who are attending IT oriented curriculums in the Hungarian vocationaleducational system, could be prepared for one of the EUCIP exams if they followed a learning pathwhich extends their IT studies with the knowledge and competences defined in the EUCIPsyllabuses.

After agreed the reviewed Hungarian versions of the EUCIP ITAF practicing tests Prompt’s trainersimplemented it on the Hungarian ITACA platform and the teachers started ITAF consultations withtheir students. 96 students were enrolled to the pilot, and 92 students took part in the official,paper based ITAF test. In both cases the students could choose Hungarian or English language fortesting.

The first Hungarian pilot with the practicing test was disappointing in April, May 2014: only very fewstudents were able to pass the test at the first attempt. After the exam the teachers asked thestudents experiences and the difficulties they faced answering the questions. The most problemsoccurred with the questions on IT Security, and on the Linux OS, and they claimed that theHungarian translation of the questions might be sometimes not clear for them.

As meanwhile the online platform was open for the students, they started to make more and morepractice guided by their teachers. The official, paper based ITAF exam was arranged on 29th of

May and on 12 of June 2014.

WP5 Hun arian Ada tation

WP7 Teachers’training in Hungary

WP8 Trainingfor Students




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The Hungarian ITACA partners could be satisfied with the final results: 52 Hungariancandidates – 15 teachers and 37 students – were successful and will get the EUCIP ITAFcertificate.

3. EXPERIENCES, CONCLUSIONS IN SZÁMALK HIGH

SCHOOL There were differences in the previous studies between the candidates. Some of the students(from class 9th and 10th) hadn’t learnt every topics covered by the exam test, but they wereinterested in the pilot, and they wanted to test their knowledge. There were some graduatedstudents, who had prior knowledge about the following topics: ICT fundamentals, operatingsystems, electronics, computer networks, programming, software development and databases.

During the test exams in most cases the students were able to interpret correctly the questions andfound the correct answers. Topics related to out-dated software versions caused serious problems,the percentage of the incorrect answers were here higher. The scores of the graduating studentswere higher and more consistent, than VET students’ of IT orientation. Graduating students areyounger and better informed in this topic.

After the test exam the students (even the VET students) felt, that to take part in the ITACA pilotwas a very good opportunity and challenge for them. They thought that the topics were necessaryfor computer experts, but the very specific questions were hard to answer. Their conclusion wasthat the knowledge defined by ITAF syllabus and represented by the test was useful andnecessary, but preparation is needed for the successful exam. Most of the questions are topical

and up-to-date. They had difficulties interpreting the text in English, and they stated that the reasonwas not only their weak language skill.

3.1 Analysis of the results of the official ITAF examsThe teachers did not organise an extra course for the preparation. They collected the questionsand important topics, which were especially difficult to answer in the test exam and discussed withthe students. During the discussions the students got a picture of missing or problematic themes,which weren’t at the curriculum yet.

The students found that at the final exam’s questions were more clear and evident than thequestions of the test exam. If we watch and compare the results we get some new information fromthem. The first diagram shows the number of the candidates according to reached points. Thecurve shows that the most of the candidates didn’t reached the minimum point for graduating.

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At the second exam there were 42 students, most of them failed on the first exam and tried itagain. After the first exam they got an “image” about the depth and the structure of the questions.

The second diagram shows the number of the candidates according to the reached points. Thecurve “moved” rightwards, that shows that the students reached higher points, it also due to betterpreparedness.

We examined each answers to the questions, it’s important to mark that there were questions thatwhich just received some good answers. Some of these questions need knowledge which were notincluded in the curriculum (mostly at class 9th and 10th), or this was due the lack of practice (e.g.:question about low-level formatting).

At SZÁMALK-Szalézi Vocational School we teach post-gradute students. Members of the first-yearsystem administrator class took part in the exams. It has to be emphasized because according tothe new curriculum, during the first year they learn the basics. Taking this into consideration, allstudents from the first year could have taken part, but after writing the pilot tests it became clearthat the term administrator was meant for system administrator. This assumption was proven bythe first exam.In point of efficiency it is an important aspect that our students specialized in IT systemadministration already learnt some special knowledge in advance during the second term,regarding Linux and Windows servers. That was the reason why we chose this group of students.

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32 examinees took part in the exams altogether. 8 of them attend evening courses, 24 of them arefull-time students. After the second exam 18 students got the qualification. 7 of them attendevening school and 11 of them are full-time students. This rate can be explained by the largerexperience and higher motivation of the students taking the evening courses.Regarding the language of the exam: 11 students took the exam in English, 21 in Hungarian. 8 ofthem passed in English and 11 in Hungarian. It can be stated that the ones who understand ESPwere more successful. Their advantage is that they can gain more updated special knowledge thanthose who can get information only in Hungarian. The Hungarian translation of the tests wascorrect so it did not influence the results.

3.1 Hardware

There were 14 questions in the tests regarding this topic. Our students’ result was 56% and 50%.Many of the questions contained knowledge from CISCO IT Essentials. Our students were prettygood at answering them correctly. Questions about the latest technologies, such as UEFI (test 1,Q3) and about special settings (test 2, Q3) appeared to be too difficult. Just like questions about

old technologies – SCSI (test 1 and 2 Q9). Nowadays it is really rare. Questions regarding specialgraphic features of monitors (test 1 and 2 Q13) also caused difficulties. Our students cannot yetsee the relationship clearly between terms like system clock and bandwidth (test 2 Q7). Theycouldn’t either answer the question containing special theoretical knowledge about cachemanagement (test 1 Q6). Questions about rarely used operations such as low level format (test2Q12) were rarely answered correctly. The reason might be the lack of practice.

3.2 Operating systems

The result of our students in this topic was 67% in the first and 74% in the second test.Not only knowledge traditionally taught about operating systems was required in the exam, but alsoabout the usage and running of Linux and Windows operating systems. There were manyquestions that our students have already learnt about so their result was pretty good, over 90%.Despite the advanced professional knowledge there were quite a lot of questions that our studentshave not learnt about yet. Questions 22, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33 in test 1, and 18, 21, 29 and 30 intest 2. This topic already indicates that the test should be scheduled during a later period of theirstudies.

3.3 Networks

The result of our students in this topic was 52% in the first, 63% in the second test. The questionswere about network protocols and server-client issues.Every single student failed Q35 in test 1. Probably the question itself suggested the wrong answer.

Digital information means information that always takes two values (true -1, false – 0) and is codedin bits, and as this was the first answer, almost everybody picked this one. The question cannot beasked in a different way, but it might help if the first answer was not about the definition of digitalinformation.Questions about network protocol were answered at an average level. Although they have sometheoretical knowledge regarding protocols, this is the subject that can be hardly experienced inpractice.Q35 in test 2, which was about ring topology, was not obvious either. The correct answer suggeststhat “two network connections are required”, but modern technology requires just one networkcard. The classical Token Ring is a closed standard already, so in recent installations it does notoccur, and in Hungary it is not even used. And FDDI requires four connections on a network card.So this question in this way is not adequate any more.

Q36 in test 2 about CIDR is quite similar. According to standards answers A and B are alsocorrect!




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Questions 45, 47 and 48 in test 1, and questions 38, 39 and 44 in test 2 refer to knowledge that willbe taught later.

3.4 IT security

The result of this topic was 56% in the first and 49% in the second test.The curriculum of IT Essentials partly contains knowledge about security, and it was answered byour students at an appropriate level. But 5 or 7 out of 12 questions required knowledge that theywill study later.The question about PING command was answered correctly by 91% in test 1 (Q49) and by 0% intest 2 (Q47). It definitely warns us that their knowledge is not yet intense.

From the result of the modules we can tell that in the subjects of operating systems and networksthey performed far better. It can be explained by the fact that mainly these two subjects were closeto their studies during this term, so after gaining experience from the first exam they could preparefor the second one. Their results did not change a lot in the subjects of hardware and IT security.

Observing the results we can state that we have chosen the right target group, but they did not getfar enough in their studies, so they do not have all the necessary knowledge. So the right time forsystem administrators to get this qualification is about the middle or the end of the last term of theirstudies.The well-composed curriculum and the summary of subject material are great help for students in

order to pass the exam in the future.




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4. IT ADMINISTRATOR LEARNING PATH FOR STUDENTS

The final versions of the learning path are available in the Google table:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApTLkuPtoW-OdHAzUVctVWVUclc1TXdOTVpaUHIxMGc&usp=drive_web#gid=0

5. ADAPTATION OF EUCIP RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS

5.1 IT Administrator Fundamental practicing test for the students’ pilot

As a part of the pilot course of students the ITAF practicing tests were translated from Italian intoEnglish and Hungarian: 4x60 questions+answers. One example test is available in English and inHungarian for the student.http://oktatas.itstudy.hu/course/view.php?id=16 http://oktatas.itstudy.hu/course/view.php?id=17 user: hustudent, password: hustudent




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5.2 Hungarian tools for the VALIDATION: ITAF QTB (Question TestBase): 300 questions + answers, documents for the paper-based

exams

Instructions for the paper based exam:

The Hungarian versions of the official ITAF tests are managed by Prompt Ltd. according to therules of the “Confidentiality Agreement” between AICA and Prompt Ltd.

All the documents of the official paper-based exams and the copies of the certificates arereserved by Prompt Ltd. according to the internal privacy rules of the company.

Itaca project - Students Learning Path in Hungary

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