I read with interest today’s report on Inside Higher Ed that the Educational Testing Service has a test of Information of Communication and Technology Literacy. Here’s a web demo.
Inside Higher Ed reports that Cal State is contemplating requiring the test of its students:

The California State University system … [is] putting the finishing touches on a test — developed in conjunction with Educational Testing Service — that they believe accurately gauges students’ technological literacy. And they are contemplating making the test a requirement that students would have to pass to move on to higher level courses, much like they do now for writing proficiency.

“People are good at learning technologies, but they are not so good at applying them,” said Barbara O’Connor, a professor of communications at California State University at Sacramento. O’Connor has become a strong advocate for increasing technological literacy.

My first instinct was to cringe at the idea that Cal State would make “the test a requirement that students would have to pass to move on to higher level courses, much like they do now for writing proficiency.” I hope that CUNY would not turn the technology skills test into a stick with which to beat students.
But I am also a strong advocate for increasing technological literacies– and I know all of you are too.

Don’t we all, already discover which skills are lacking and help students to acquire them? The first day of many classes using Blackboard or a blog is often the day students are given instructions to log on and post; if they have trouble, they’re given extra help by the professor or asked to get someone at the computer labs to walk them through. Skill building in the context of the course, with attention paid to which skills are needed and when, seems a no-brainer to me.

There are seven proficiencies tested in the 75 minute test, here are three examples:

Under “Manage” information, activities include:

• Sorting e-mails into appropriate folders
• Re-ordering a table to maximize efficiency in two tasks with incompatible requirements
• Documenting relationships using an organization chart

Under the “Evaluate” header, activities include:

• Selecting the best database for an information need
• Determining the sufficiency (or lack) of information in a Web site, given the information need
• Ranking Web pages in terms of meeting particular criteria
• Determining the relevance of postings on a Web discussion board

Activities under the heading “Communicate” include:

• Formatting a word processing document
• Recasting an e-mail
• Adapting presentation slides
• Preparing a text message for a cell phone

Those are mostly really useful things for students to be able to do in some educational or work settings. Some skills are useful for all. (Some not so much.) I don’t think many Baruch students need much help on “preparing a text message for a cell phone,” but that’s another story.
My gut reaction to this is that students learn technological skills by using technological skills. And they all have different proficiencies.

First year composition teachers know that lecturing to a class of students about grammar doesn’t do much. Each student has their own patterns of error: they don’t all have the same skills that need work. You can give some brief targeted lessons about the most common patterns of error, but they have to be brief and targeted.

I think technology skills are similar. If most of the class does not know how to post to the new blog, a brief lesson and a handout with the details for reference, is in order. But I don’t think the skills noted in the brief snippet above (and those in the other 4 areas tested) can be easily and quickly taught except where integrated into content-based courses. We have to continually teach (and test) these skills in courses where they are needed and used.
Sure, we could use some more technology workshops and maybe even a test that helps students decide which of those workshops to attend.
What we can’t do is teach all technology/writing/critical thinking skills at once. Non-context-specific technology education is boring and does not work.