CIL 102 and CIL 102L Outcomes and Assessment.

CIL 102 and CIL 102L Outcomes and Assessment. (26 May 2014)

J. Beidler, CIL Coordinator

The fundamental material covered in CIL 102 and CIL 102L appear on the CIL website at . Included on that page is a link to a page that was developed in 1998 when the course was proposed, . The course materials have evolved over time. Perhaps the most significant change has been the use of the terminology from the book, Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, by Stuart Selber, where Dr. Selber describes three stages, or levels of development, of Digital Literacy ? Functional Literacy, Critical Literacy, and Rhetorical Literacy. Functional Literacy is the ability to use digital technology as a tool to gather, evaluate, and disseminate information at a basic level. Critical Literacy is the next step up, where individuals can discuss the pros and cons of the applications of various digital resources. Rhetorical Literacy is the ability to employ digital technology to gather, evaluate, and disseminate knowledge in a discipline.

The goal of the CIL 102 course and laboratory is to establish a functional literacy foundation and build the basics of critical literacy on top of the functional foundation as related to five outcome areas:

1. Digital Basics and Communications: An understanding of operating system and network basics and connecting to sources which may contain information which is useful in problem solving.

2. Word processing/Presentation Manager: Useful in presenting the solution as well as organizing data and information for analysis and design.

3. Spreadsheets: Useful in analysis of some types of problems and the design of their solutions. 4. Database(Search emphasis): Form queries to extract information that is employed to analyze

and determine a solution to a problem. 5. Graphics/Alternate Visualizations: Employed to analyze and present information in various

forms and formats.

CIL 102L has 13 laboratory components. The table below illustrates the association between each laboratory component and the five course outcome areas (listed above).

Laboratory Component OS basics EMail, ftp, telnet Web Pages Word 1 Word 2 PowerPoint Excel 1 Excel 2 Library

Digital Basics & Communications

X X

X

X

Word Processing

X X X

Spreadsheets

X X X

Database Graphics

X

X

X

X

Search Lab.

X

Integration

X

X

X

X

Security

X

Digital Media

X

X

The laboratory components test the computer literacy functional basics as related to the five outcome areas. The integration component performs a basic test of the critical literacy abilities of the students.

The five outcomes areas are also tested in the CIL 102 course with a required final exam components, a 50 question multiple choice component in each instructors final. From the beginning the majority of questions focused on the outcome areas 1, 4, and 5, because we believed that outcome areas 2 and 3 are sufficiently covered in the Lab. Also, area 1 has grown to include societal and social networking issues because of the growing nature of those topics.

After each semester the department has discussed the common component of the exam. Over the past few years this discussion has led to changes that reflect the changes in technology, like eliminating questions regarding various disk media and addressing issues of mobil technology and cloud computing.

Since the inception of the CIL 102 course we have used a common component in the final exam. This common component is based upon the similar fifty question multiple choice component of the Concept part of the CIL Exemption Exam. Over the past three years the concept component of the final exam has mirrored the concept part of the CIL Exemption exam. By mirroring we mean that the questions cover the same collection of topics and that few questions are the same. About 2/3 of the student who take the Exemption exam fail the concept part of the exam, a failure rate around 66%. Of the 116 student who took the CIL final exam, only 6 failed the fifty question multiple choice concept part of the final exam giving us a failure rate of slightly above 5%. We plan to further verify the concept part of the final exam by using it this fall as the multiple choice component of the CIL Exemption Exam.

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