THE NEW APPROACH TO MEASURING COMPUTER LITERACY AT THE UWB

Abstract

Nowadays computer literacy is one of the required conditions demanded by employer, who wants to success in today’s labor market. Unfortunately so called necessary minimum of knowledge is not exactly defined. In the Czech Republic computer literacy is an important part of basic education. Our educators face the difficult issue of assessing a level of computer literacy among our students. This case study compares two tools used for testing of computer literacy. For this study we selected two testing tools, the Original Testing System (OTS) and the Modified Testing System (MTS), and investigated them thoroughly by quantitative comparison. In our case study, this quantitative comparison of those testing tools was done using data collected from a freshman-level Word and Excel course in fall 2010 semester in the University of West Bohemia (UWB). Comparison was based on analysis of the performance of 138 students attending this course. We analyzed correlations between the scores from our two testing instruments. We conducted a paired sample t-test for the sake of comparison of the students’ performance between the examination scores. This study has limitations, which were discussed and based on them, recommendations for future works and directions were included.

Keywords

• computer literacy
• computer education
• computer skills
• assessment