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Wednesday, 06 July 2005 |
More Than IM and
MP3
Inside Higher Ed -
Washington,DC,USA
Many students these days prefer instant messaging to phone calls, and
music downloads (legal or otherwise) to music purchases. But students’ agility
with those technologies doesn’t necessarily mean they can tell a quality online
source from an advertisement. Or that they know how to use e-mail to communicate
effectively.
Measuring those skills — and helping colleges plan curricular and library
offerings accordingly — is the goal of a new standardized test that the
Educational Testing Service is now opening up to widespread use, with the first
such administration scheduled for January. The exam — which is designed for
placement and evaluation, not admissions — has been in a testing period with a
small group of colleges.
The Information and Communication Technology Assessment, as the test is known,
can be scored individually and colleges can receive aggregate scores. The test
was first announced last year, but a number of changes have been made based on
early administrations of the exam.
Terry Egan, project manager for the test for ETS, said that the exam grew out of
a sense among educators that there is more than a “digital divide,” but a
“proficiency divide” in which students “have access to technology, but don’t
know how to use it.”
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