Center for International Cooperation in Education Development (CICED)

Anton Agapov, READ Program Expert
Using SAM to Measure Computer Literacy

This work is devoted to the development of a diagnostic tool aimed at assessing information and communication literacy, and based on the SAM level model. The relevance of the work is due to the high pace of development of modern information technologies, their penetration into the educational process and the everyday life of adolescents. In response to this, part of educational policy in different countries has become the introduction of information and technology literacy as an expected outcome of school education. This, in turn, has led to the emergence of various monitoring studies related to ICT literacy.

The developed instrument, in addition to its testological characteristics, must have technological simplicity in development and interpretation in order to expand the possibilities for its use in the CIS countries. The authors chose a practice-oriented approach to developing tasks, which will allow assessing ICT literacy in a situation as close as possible to reality, and facilitating the interpretation of the results.

The main stages of the work were the analysis of the main modern theoretical models for measuring ICT literacy; analysis of the age characteristics of the target audience and the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard in the field of ICT literacy; development, examination and testing of the test and its web version.

There are many approaches to defining and building the structure of IT literacy in the world. In PISA, it is “the interest, attitude and ability of people to use digital technologies and communication tools appropriately to access, manage, integrate and evaluate information, gain new knowledge and communicate with others to participate effectively in society.” In ETS, it is “the use of digital technologies, communications and/or networks to access, manage, integrate, evaluate and create information to function in a knowledge society.”

The work is available here.