Teachers' Certification on Basic Computer Skills

Teachers need to acquire technology and digital skills in order to be able to follow the rapid changes in society. Since 2003, a national project has been carried out in Greece concerning the certification of teachers in basic computer skills. During this project (2003-2009) many teachers participated and certified through a Computer Based Assessment system (CBA) that has been developed by the Computer Technology Institute & Press Diophantus. In this paper a brief view of (a) syllabus, (b) item bank, and (c) tools that are used for preparing and delivering examinations for teachers’ certification on basic computer skills is given. Moreover, the participants profile based on teachers’ responses is explored. DOI: 10.4018/ijcee.2012040102 International Journal of Cyber Ethics in Education, 2(2), 12-23, April-June 2012 13 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. vantages of a CBA could be the unbiased test administration and scoring, the ability to apply testing methodologies, the suitability for largescale assessment etc (Asuni, 2008). Computer skills assessment is carried out globally following automated or semi-automated methods for assessment. Some commercial projects in this field are: European Computer Driving License (ECDL), Microsoft User Specialist (MOUS), Internet and Computing Core Certification (IC3), etc. Certification of knowledge and skills could be a complex task when the following parameters are involved: (a) large scale assessment (b) simultaneous consideration of many people (c) geographical dispersion (d) delivering many equivalent tests (e) different cognitive subjects. Teachers need to acquire technology and digital skills in order to be able to follow the rapid changes in society. During the last years a national project has been carried out in Greece concerning the certification of teachers in elementary and secondary education in basic computer skills. During this project (2003-2009) almost 90.000 teachers participated and certified through a Computer Based Assessment system (CBA) that has been developed by the Computer Technology Institute & Press – Diophantus (Androulakis et al., 2006). Most of the participants followed a dedicated training program on using computers (48 hours) covering five cognitive objects: (a) Theory-MS Windows, (b) Word Processing, (c) Spreadsheets, (d) Internet & email, (e) Management Presentations (Papadakis & Chatziperis, 2000) The data gathered (2003-2009) is considered interesting for educational policy makers and need to be analyzed because: • Different types of participants are involved (elementary teachers, mathematicians, philologists, literature teachers, physicists, etc.); • Certifications are carried out in a national level (large scale); • Five cognitive objects are involved (theory-MS windows, word processing, spreadsheets,internet-email, presentation); • Time (date and time, items’ response time, etc) and spatial (prefecture, city, etc) data have been recorded. TEACHERS’ CERTIFICATION ON BASIC COMPUTER SKILLS