Developing information and computer literacy of first-year students when studying computer science

Contemporary education is mainly aimed at students’ acquiring the level that would be enough to realise their potential and to guarantee the progress in the development of modern society. Modern well-educated society should be literate. Functional literacy is of great importance amidst all kinds of literacy. The notion of functional literacy is widely discussed since it is considered to be an integrated characteristic of the quality of the students’ training. Developing functional literacy is a long process and it is present at any course taken at university. The paper describes the developing of two kinds of functional literacy: information and computer ones. Nowadays, information is a major resource in the society and the computer becomes a major tool to build an information society. Improving personal computers and developing software contribute to using computers in almost every aspect of our lives. Thus, acquiring information and computer literacy is a prerequisite for efficient life in modern society. To determine the levels of information and computer literacy in students, we used the following methods: analysis and synthesis of academic literature, testing, experiment, pedagogical observation and mathematical methods of statistics. As a result, the following notions were studied: literacy, functional literacy and its major kinds. Students’ skills in information and computer literacy were revealed. The levels of information and computer literacy in the community of first-year students were described; an empirical study was made. The results enable to evaluate the testing systems, that had been developed in accordance with the Federal Educational Standards, to correct the syllabi of the course of Computer Science for the first-year students of the Faculty of Psychology and Pedagogy, Altai State University.