Closing the Gap: Proficiency vs. Perception

Abstract

The gaps that exist between a student’s self-perceived computer skills, their actual computer skills, and the computer skills deemed important in business pose an interesting challenge for business schools, today, and for the foreseeable future.  One strategy for managing these literacy gaps is developing curriculum that better tailors content to the evolving literacy of students. In an effort to operationalize this strategy, we have undertaken a study to measure the magnitude of the literacy gaps and the effectiveness of an introductory computer course required in our undergraduate business program. This paper presents the initial results of that study.