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IT Literacy Test
crumley writes "The Educational Testing Service just announced a new
test that is designed to measure information technology literacy. The test is supposed to measure the ability of students to use software to solve problems, and not just how to use particular programs. So has anyone out there taken a test like this? Did it seem to measure critical thinking and problem solving skills?"
While this is a good measurement of progress for our current interface and will be useful to measure the average worker. I expect it to be hopelessly interface dependent. There is more than one good and useful GUI or TUI (is there another name for a text only UI?)
Any test will necessarily miss relevant skills, and will over- or under-emphasize certain things. If you can be a paper-MCSE, there's no particular reason to believe that you can't be a paper-"IT literate".
The idea of this test is fundamentally flawed. If you are good at problem solving, you will be good at problem solving in a technology-rich environment or a technology-poor environment equally. Analytical thought and problem solving has been around a lot longer than computers, and the same people that are good at solving problems with computers were good at solving problems with other things before computers.
I've always hated technology tests, because they necessarily favor a particular way of doing things, and show a clear bias to the solutions preferred by whoever came up with the test. My techniques are rarely the "industry standard" techniques, so I often find myself on tech assessment tests choosing the answers I know the test creators think are right, even if in my experience they aren't the best or most efficient way to do things.
Many are familiar with the often frustratingly cryptic interview questions from Microsoft and others... my favorite (which I would certainly use if I were running a support department):
"You come home and flip the switch, but the lights don't come on. Describe in as much detail as you can how you would go about fixing the problem."
Most people I've asked respond with "replace the light bulb." While that might be the problem, I think the first thing you should do is try the switch again. Maybe you didn't flip the switch all the way, or you hit the wrong one.
The point is that it's a problem solving experience - and not just in technology. It doesn't require expertise in Microsoft Word. It doesn't take a techie to know this stuff. You can measure a person's aptitude for logic, problem-solving, etc. without ever testing specific examples of those skills. That's what I really like about that question. Hopefully, the ETS exam will take this perspective when developing such tests.
My techniques are rarely the "industry standard" techniques...
Man, when I was in college, we had 8 or 9 different "Industry Standards". While most teachers were absolutely convinced that their method was the "Industry Standard", there were a few knowledgable enough to explained the whole thing to us. Mostly when people talk about "Industry Standards", it's manager-speak for "The Way We Do Things Here." So if you don't follow the "Industry Standards", you will not be working for long.
Also keep in mind that "Industry Standards" in the sense that I'm talking about has absolutely nothing to do with real ISO or QS standards. Those are actual organizations that create a set of standard rules for companies to follow, usually for the safety of workers and quality assurance of products. No, I'm just talking BS manager-speak...