Abstract:

During the Lisbon summit held in the year 2000, the European governments agreed that “Businesses and citizens must have access to an inexpensive, world-class communications infrastructure and a wide range of services. Every citizen must be equipped with the skills needed to live and work in this new information society” (Bulletin EU 3, 2000). The importance of e-skills is globally recognized and several programmes have been launched towards this direction in European countries.

ICT skills are mainly assessed through automated tools which require examinees to complete specific tasks. Usually these tasks are isolated and the tools exhibit specific design shortcomings which affect the certification process from a pedagogical perspective. For example, questions are posed using specific language or students do not have the opportunity to see the results of their actions, which hinders their effort.

In this paper, we focus on ICT certification tools. Via a number of focused evaluations with people who have been certified through these tools we record their similarities and differences and we identify some of their shortcomings. The results of this evaluation led to the design of a more pedagogically efficient ICT tool which is enriched in features so as to be more tailored to the needs of various users.

The paper is structured as follows:
Section 1: An introduction to the main subject of the paper is given.
Section 2: In this section we review works on the importance of ICT certification, the integration of ICT certification in various educational systems, and the automated tools used in these actions.
Section 3: In this section we evaluate the tools used in ICT certifications using a “Question – asking Protocol”, observation and focused interviews with 30 examinees. A number of problems have been identified which could be improved by using a more efficient design.
Section 4: We propose a new design, more pedagogically suitable which integrates the desired features identified during the evaluation.
Section 5: Discussion and Conclusions.

References:
[1] Calzarossa M., Ciancarini P., Mich L., and Scarabottolo N. (2009). ICT teaching and certification in Italian high schools. Informatics Education Europe IV - IEE IV, pages 89–94.
[2] Korte, W.B, Husing, T., Hendriks, L., Dirkx, J. (2013). Towards a European Quality Label for ICT Industry Training and Certification. Final Report
[3] Přibáň, T. (2011) E-Learning and possibilities of the improvement of computer literacy, Journal of Interdisciplinary Research
[4] Weiß, P. (2009) Common Language to Achieve Transparency of ICT Certifications; Proceedings of I-PROF: ICT Professionalism: a Global Challenge.

Keywords:

ICT certification, e-testing, assessment, educational technology.