Users' Learning of Principles of Computer Operations

In order to develop computer competence, users need to understand principles of its operation in addition to memorizing where a particular operation is located in menus. Understanding a princi- ple ease transfer of learning, hence the understanding helps learning a new application. These principles, e.g. functional dependency, are based in computer science, and are thereby precise and general. Two cycles of the Action-Process-Model (Aharoni, 2000) of learning abstract concepts are used to characterize the learning process of such principles. Observations and tests of students in a high school show discrimination errors and forgetting already in the first of six stages of learning. Nevertheless, the majority of the students arrived at the fourth stage of learning func- tional dependency. In order to improve learning, teachers need to provide both intermediate and general concepts so that the learners can verbalize their actions and hence improve their under- standing.