Technological Competence: What It Is and How Will We

Know It When Someone Has It?

Ruth Burridge Lindemann, Ph.D.Danville Area Community College

In 2003…

The Assessment Committee declared “technological competence” should be one of our general education outcomes.

We wanted to be sure our students could compete in the brave new world…

Photo courtesy of: http://benmoreno.net/the-buddy-geek/

Then we Alfred E Newman’ed it, while we were re-accredited, etc.

Before we knew it, it was

Time to review our options

• Self assessments• Information literacy models– Project SAILS

• Performance Competency – that diverts students into classes http://www.hctc.commnet.edu/ASC/computerLiteracy/index.asp

• Normed tests – 21st Century Skills – Elementary and middle school

What did we mean?

What was “technological competence” anyway?Varying opinions on this point… so we…

Created a Committee…

Virtual Committee1. Everyone seems agreed that computer skills should be part

of any general campus-wide technology assessment. What computer skills should every student be able to perform?

2. Each discipline will be assessing technology specific to their subject area, but are there technological skills you believe we need to make sure that every student can do? Examples might be mobile technology, basic calculator operation, etc.

3. Consider your answers to Questions 1 & 2. What general education classes do you feel might be best suited to including training in each of these particular skills.

4. Are any particular considerations that the College needs to take into account in relation to particular populations? Older or returning students? Students for whom English is not a first language?

Preliminary Results

• Wide-ranging recommendations– Pre- and post-testing– Widely varied skill sets:• file management (such as backing up originals)• applications such as Word, etc.• internet skills (evaluation to applying for jobs)• hardware skills like webcams

– Basic calculator, phone, camera, copier, and printer skills

Became clearer what level of work was involved

so we… Agreed to Survey the Faculty…

The Survey

1 Month of Badgering, Cajoling and Bribery to get 32 respondents to the survey, which is at least 54% of the full-time faculty plus 5 selected part-time faculty members.

One Normed Exam

• iCritical Thinking Assessment/Certification– $45 discounted to $35

Conclusions• Great willingness to incorporate change into their

curricula• Strong areas of consensus – which matched the

areas tested by the iCritical Thinking Exam• The process for developing the practical exams

would entail designating individual specialists within the College to draft problems, testing them, creating an appropriate testing environment for a technical test, etc. – for a non-normed result

• $45/student began to look reasonable