At the beginning of my class this semester - college level Microcomputer Applications - I used Google Forms to deliver a survey and collect information about students: their life situation, computer skills, computer use experience and habits etc. Learner responses to questions provide at least some validation to the myth of the computer literate “digital native” discussed in this space previously.

How do my students rate their own computer literacy?

When self reporting their own computer literacy on a scale of 1 (Not at all) to 10 (Extremely), a full 70% of the class (N=29) rated themselves a 6 or higher with another 22% placing themselves in the middle of the scale. That makes a full 92% of the class that considers themselves moderately to extremely computer literate.  If you exclude the most extreme responses, 86% of my students reported between 5 and 8, inclusive.

However, from the same survey, less than 10% of the students indicated they use a database application (10%), presentation software (0%), or spreadsheet application (3%) more than “maybe once a week” each.  And, surprisingly, the numbers weren’t much higher for word processing applications; only 11% of the group suggested they use word processing software more than “maybe once a week.” (review summary results here)

Given that:

• Word Processing, Spreadsheet & Presentation applications are considered “core applications” by the IC3 definition of computer literacy.
• An “Introduction to Computers” curriculum - ostensibly to provide a foundation for computer literacy - typically teaches all four types of applications.
• and, those four types of applications form the core of the most commonly used office productivity suites.

How can a group of learners consider themselves to have better than average computer literacy skills when they rarely use these applications?  My answer . . .?  Either (a) our learners are not as computer literate as they (and many others) would like to think or (b) our institutional definitions of computer literacy are way off.  Granted, this only considers one component of the IC3 definition of computer literacy (with the others being basic hardware knowledge and use of the internet), but I tend to think it’s the former.  Your thoughts?

Related posts:

1. Discourse: "Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants"
2. The Importance of Computer & Information Literacy
3. Classroom Clicker via Google Forms
4. Twitter in the Classroom

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Tags: computer_literacy, millenials