THE IMPACT OF PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENTS ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IN COMPUTER SCIENCE LESSONS: ANALYSIS OF AN INTERNATIONAL STUDY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR AZERBAIJANI SCHOOLS

The article analyses the effect of practical assignments on student achievement in computer science lessons, using the quasi-experimental study by Olaniyi et al. (2024) conducted with 120 students in Ekiti State, Nigeria, and compares it with the 2013 informatics curriculum of Azerbaijani schools. Effect sizes and pairwise comparisons were recalculated from the means and ANOVA tables reported in the original article. Mean scores rose from 38.48 to 59.95 in the practical group, from 38.15 to 58.56 in the frequent-testing group and from 34.30 to 46.63 in the control group. Both treatment groups differ from the control group by a large effect (d ≈ 1.33 and 1.19), whereas the 1.39-point difference between them is not significant by the Scheffé criterion, so the original claim that practical work is more effective is not supported by the reported data (95% CI of the difference: −3.04 to 5.82 points); equally, the data do not show that the two approaches are equally effective. In the Azerbaijani curriculum (2013), 23 of 74 sub-standards of the algorithmization and programming strand (31%) are expressed through practical action verbs, mainly in Grades VII–IX and XI, and a local methodological paper identifies insufficiently developed teaching methods as a problem. Local experimental studies that measure practical skill directly are therefore needed.