TECCI - ICT Literacy Project

Information and Communication technologies offer new, comprehensive means of acquiring and exchanging information. Owing to their wide-spread and common use, dealing with information and communication technologies in a competent, independent and critical way, subsumed under the term of Information and Communication Technology Literacy (ICT Literacy), is regarded as increasingly relevant for participation in society.

From a theoretical perspective, the construct of ICT Literacy still lacks an appropriate definition and from a diagnostic point of view, only a few instruments exist which would allow for a valid assessment. Hence, the project focuses on the theoretical and empirical foundations of two ICT Literacy facets, i.e. the competence for using basic interactive computer functionalities and the competence for assessing the reliability of information provided online. TBA has developed an authoring tool, the  CBA Item Builder, which will be deployed to test innovative task types, simulating computer environments and thus ensuring a more valid assessment and more comprehensive behaviour data (reactions, reaction times, sequences of events).

Objectives

The following objectives and research questions are targeted and empirically analysed:

• Conceptualising “basic computer skills“ and “assessment of the reliability of information that is available online “ and development of respective scales
• Confirmatory testing of assumptions on scale dimensions and characteristics determining task difficulty
• Validation of new scales on the basis of scales representing practical computer knowledge, cognitive basic skills, speed of perception, basic reading skills and self-reported information on computer usage and other background variables

Methodological approach

In a first step, theoretical foundations of the two ICT-Literacy facets are determined and computer-based measurement instruments are accordingly developed. These will be subsequently submitted to two tests in classes of different school tracks, optimised and validated.

Funding

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

Co-operation

DIPF: Johannes Naumann, Ulf Kröhne