The Future of Education

Training individuals capable of analysing, understanding and explaining the functioning of the economy is a big challenge for Schools of Economics and Business. In this context, Econometrics can be considered as a strategic tool, providing competences referred to the ability to search, process and analyse information, and identify, pose and solve problems. Since the skills in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are increasingly important and the educational software plays an outstanding role in the teaching-learning process, in this paper we focus on the adequacy of software packages, proposing the “Four-F” test and analysing Gretl (Gnu Regression Econometrics and Time series Library) as a case study. The Four-F test includes the requirements of Freedom, Flexibility, Functionality and Friendliness and, in order to test these hypotheses, we have collected empirical evidence through online students´ surveys. The obtained results provide interesting information, confirming that Gretl is perceived as a free, flexible and friendly software package, and detecting some difficulties related to the most demanding functionality requirements, such as the console or workfile management.

Keywords: Econometrics, Gretl, freedom, flexibility, functionality, friendliness.

References:

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