Spreadsheet engineering education: how to improve it? Case of Serbia

Abstract

Spreadsheets are becoming increasingly important in many companies. They are suitable to be applied in various business tasks. Thus, it is important to provide appropriate trainings and courses. Many educational institutions recognized the importance of spreadsheets by including in the curricula of their programs. Therefore, authors examined the current spreadsheet state in Serbia. We analyzed the sources of this type of education, and examined the amount and area of spreadsheet usage and quality of provided spreadsheet knowledge. The results show that this tool is applicable in almost every functional area of company and that the main sources of spreadsheet education are higher education institutions. However, the quality of the knowledge is not on the expected level. These results represent an initial effort to identify the directions for curricula improvement, intended for future research.