Computer Application Contest Changes with Evolving Technology

By Linda Tarrant, State Computer Applications Director | Tuesday, February 07, 2012 9:23 AM

Since the Computer Application Contest is based on Microsoft Office, we will continue to make incremental changes to keep abreast of the evolving technology. This year, the competitors will be using only Office 2007 or Office 2010. The format of these two versions of software is fairly consistent.

Access seems to have the most differences, including the following:

• Access 2010 has a new File ribbon that replaces the features found on the Office button of Access 2007.
• Access 2010 report wizard has no Style element, so tests primarily use the "None" style in Access 2007 to produce similar reports.
• Access 2010 reports have shading and borders around many of the elements, and tests are written to ignore shading and borders unless specified.
• Access 2010 reports have the label in the Report Headers disconnected from the detail line field, and these are not necessarily the same width. Moving a column heading does not also move the detail line field as it did in Access 2007. Also, if a test asks that a column heading and detail data be centered, these will have to be made the same width.
• The shortcut to get to the report wizard is no longer Alt-C-W as it was in Access 2007. The shortcut is now Alt-C-RZ for Access 2010.

There are more differences in the versions of Access, and there are a few in Excel and Word, but these were much more transparent.

Currently, we are considering the distribution of larger files via downloading from the UIL website so that tests will not be as severely impacted by typographical errors and will be closer to what is common in the business world usage of Microsoft Office. If a student enters a typo, then every field that is calculated based on the field with the typo is also incorrect, and this complicates grading by having graders count a field correct if it matches the key or if, for instance, the field is equal to a particular calculation that graders must do to determine correctness. When we eliminate typos in the entered data, we eliminate this complication in grading.

An Access database is posted on the UIL website entitled Starter Files. We'd like coaches to download this file and the associated file, Downloadable Instructions.pdf, with directions for this exercise. If this experiment works well, we will use a downloadable database for the State UIL test. This database has 350+ records in a table entitled Employees, and it has nearly 1,000 records in a table entitled Sales. This will enable the test to work with a large set of data without requiring students to enter that data.

The Downloadable Instructions has directions for taking a sample test using the downloaded Starter Files. Included in the Downloadable Instructions are following:

1. Explanation. This is an explanation of what this experiment is intended to accomplish.
2. Test. The test uses the downloaded database to make calculations using an update query and printing a report in Access which has summary only data. The test then creates a select query, taking fields from both the All Employees table and from the All Sales table and exports the result to an Excel worksheet. Students are instructed to use the Excel data to create a pivot table and hide part of the rows of data and print the worksheet.
3. Score Sheets. Scoring sheets are available for each of the printouts similar to scoring sheets for all Computer Application invitational tests and a Final Total scoring sheet is included for composite scores.
4. Printouts. Both printouts are included after the scoring sheets.
5. Additional Data. Since this is an experiment, this packet includes a printout of the update query formulas, a printout of the select query fields, a printout of the design view of the report and a printout of the building of the pivot table.

After you've tried the sample test yourself, have your students attempt the test. I would really like to get feedback via email hexco@hexco.com on how this system worked. I think this will actually give students a truer picture of how people use Microsoft Office, particularly Excel and Access. Perhaps, eventually this will make it clear what the actual function of a database is as opposed to the usage of a spreadsheet. Many students working with a very limited collection of data have little understanding of the value of database applications and feel that everything can be done in a spreadsheet. This is not the case when there are large database files and multiple related tables. Hopefully, this will also make the grading a bit more straightforward with the elimination of most typos.

Thanks to computer applications coaches for all you do to help students develop these important skills. I look forward to hearing from you.