Innovative and Effective Spreadsheet Tool for Learning Sentiment Analysis and Prediction

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a spreadsheet tool which was developed and implemented to teach sentiment analysis and prediction to university students who are less technically inclined. We adopted the “Use-Modify-Create” cycle to ensure that the students learn the computing concepts and practices in a progressive and active learning manner, and we evaluated the effectiveness of the tool using the Learning Object Evaluation Scale for Students (LOES-S). The evaluation shows that our tool performed well in terms of quality, learn and engagement constructs, and our paired T-test shows strong evidence that, on average, the course module with the tool does lead to improvement in the students’ knowledge in sentiment analysis and prediction.