The following is an excerpt from a paper presented as a research project for IDE-712 Analysis for Human Performance Technology Decisions, (Dr. Jing Lei, professor). It is not an exhaustive survey of every existing Digital Literacy assessment instrument, but it is a start.

You may review the entire paper here. Includes numerous references, online resource links, and a PDF download.

A Review of Digital Literacy Assessment Instruments

Instructional Designers rely on tools that bear useful measurements for assessing learner characteristics in front-end analysis settings. In the digital network environment, we find learners possess a wide variety of skills, experiences, interests, attitudes, and comprehension about digital tools, information systems, and content. Instructional Designers, as well as learning institutions, may desire information on normative or criterion based assessment instruments to measure learner competence in the areas of Digital Literacy prior to engaging them in instruction.

As a starting point, however, we encounter a disparate field of research making navigation towards locating assessment instruments difficult and time consuming. There are a number of broadly defined territories within the geography of digital literacy, e.g. economics, politics, education, communication media (Gapski, 2007), each with their own connotation of Digital Literacy. There are discussions on whether the framework of digital literacy should be pedagogical or functional (Pietrass, 2007; Calvani, Cartelli, Fini and Ranieri, 2008), questions about gender bias in assessment questionnaires (Pietrass, 2007), and discord over certain assessment instrument methods, such as the validity of self-reporting, narrowness of results due to subject specificity, or pre-/post-testing inconsistencies (Baird, 1973, in LeBold et al, 1998; Sieber, V., 2009; Davies, Szabo, and Montgomerie, 2002; O’Connor, Radliff, and Gedeon, 2001; Kvakiv, 2005). Further, there are various terms to describe similar or overlapping research, such as information literacy, ICT competence, web literacy, 21^st century skills, new literacy practices, information fluency, tech literacy, information competence, digital competence, computer literacy, media literacy, eCompetence, media competence, and others.

Thus, selecting a means for gauging Digital Literacy requires understanding the construct of the research, and answering some critical questions about assessment context and approaches (Gapski, 2007):

• Which level of analysis is relevant (the individual digital literate student, groups and/or a digital literate school as a social system)?
• Which context of usage is relevant with regard to the “myriad of digital literacies”?
• What is the object of measuring (processes or structures)?
• Which perspective method is applied (self-observation, external observation, qualitative and quantitative approaches)?

In this paper we review literature concerning the basis of assessing student Digital Literacy, and the instruments used in the process. Although not an exhaustive document, this report may assist those who seek orientation on the basics of Digital Literacy, and assessment instruments to measure it.