Design

Forty two subjects recruited by an employment agency participated. One group of 22 subjects used Lotus 1-2-3 and the other group used Lotus HAL. The subjects had little or no experience working with microcomputers or spreadsheets and none of the subjects had any experience with either Lotus 1-2-3 or Lotus HAL.

The experimental sessions took 3 days. The first day and a half was used for training with the remaining day and a half for testing. The Lotus 1-2-3 sessions were held on three successive days of one week; the Lotus HAL sessions were held on the same days of the following week. Subjects participated from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM. with an hour break for lunch and fifteen minute breaks in the morning and afternoon.

The training sessions were conducted by the Al Napier who has had considerable experience training people on Lotus 1-2-3 and on Lotus HAL at a Lotus Authorized Training Center. The training consisted of combinations of lecture and practice on problems. During lectures, the instructor's computer screen was projected at the front of the room with subjects following along by typing into computers at their seats. The other three authors assisted during lectures by helping people individually who were falling behind. During the practice problem solving sessions all four authors gave assistance as it was needed.

The first day consisted entirely of lectures and the basics of using a spreadsheet were covered. At the beginning of the second day, subjects were given 45 minutes to work (without assistance) the last problem that they worked along with the instructor the day before.

In the afternoon session of the second day and in the morning and afternoon sessions of the third day subjects were asked to solve a series of problem sets. In the first hour of the third day, the Wonderlic Personnel Test was administered. The Wonderlic is a test of general intelligence. In the last hour of the third day demographic information and information about subjects' subjective impressions of the spreadsheet software they used were gathered through the use of a questionnaire.

Performance was judged for correctness of the answers and of the formatting. For this case study, only the data on correctness of the answers will be presented.