Effectiveness of teaching Excel and Access using actual and simulated platforms – A comparative study

Microsoft Excel and Access are widely used in introductory courses designed to teach the fundamentals of spreadsheet and relational database modeling skills in various disciplines. To achieve the targeted learning outcomes, instructors of these courses strive to provide students with guided, frequent, and incrementally fruitful practice with the software. Instructors often can facilitate such practice using the actual software or by employing a virtually simulated version of the software integrated into a learning management system. This article presents the results of a study that compared the effectiveness of using actual versus simulated Excel and Access environments as alternative or complementary instructional platforms in an introductory undergraduate course in information systems. The underlying study distinguished between instructor-led guidance using the actual software and autonomous self-paced instructions provided in the simulated environment while using multiple objective and subjective learning assessment tools. The mixed impacts of these scenarios promote a hybrid learning approach that uses both strategies to most effectively enhance students’ competency in Excel and Access.