Developing Standards and Norms for Computer Literacy. Discussion Paper 06/80.

This paper provides educators with a general perspective on computer literacy and an in-depth examination of the Computer Literacy Awareness Assessment conducted by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC). Addressing computer literacy as part of the ongoing use of computers in a classroom setting is identified as the most reasonable approach for introducing computer literacy to British Columbia. Computer literacy is then defined and discussed in terms of specific experiences or desired outcomes of literacy. The remainder of the paper discusses the development of the Minnesota Assessment, including purposes of the test and its structure. The test comprises three parts: (1) affective assessment--six scales of five items each; (2) cognitive test--53 true/false or multiple choice items; and (3) survey of background variables--37 items. The appendices include the validation of the test; administration and scoring norms; a priori cognitive sub-test; revised cognitive sub-tests; reliabilities, means and standard deviations for cognitive sub-tests; intercorrelations and percentile norms of cognitive sub-test and revised sub-test; affective scales; and Computer Literacy Questionnaire. (CHC)