A Comparison of Elementary Student Curriculum Satisfaction to Performance

Abstract

Elementary students need to learn keyboarding skills in order to keep up with expectations of teachers. The purposes of this study include: to explore if there is any relationship between student satisfaction with the curriculum and improvement in average words per minute (WPM), and between student improvement in WPM and their perception of whether they had improved or not. Two schools were used in this study: a lower elementary (K-2nd grades) and an upper elementary (3rd-5th grades). A keyboarding instruction program was used, and at the end of the school year two questions were asked: “Did you like the activities you did in computer lab?” and “Do you think you are better at keyboarding now?” Results indicate that the younger students tended to have a higher change in WPM when they reported that they did not enjoy the activities and vice versa for the older students. The results showed that in relation to the second question, the lower elementary students had no significant difference in improvement in WPM whether they reported “yes” or “no”. The upper elementary school showed more improvement if they answered that they thought they had improved. The results give evidence that older elementary students are able to comprehend their improvement more than the others. This may influence their view of how much they like the curriculum; or it could be because they achieve greater improvement when they enjoy the curriculum. More research needs to be done to fully understand the relationship.