Benchmarking ICT Literacy in Tertiary Learning Settings

For many years now, there have been many who have agonised over the concept of a minimum computing skills level as an important outcome of schooling and education in general. Numerous terms have been used to describe this set of skills. The more familiar descriptions have included such terms as, computer awareness, computer literacy, information literacy, and information and communications technologies (ICT) literacy. In contemporary tertiary education, the need for a basic set of computing skills and understandings has returned to the agenda with the growth of interest in generic skills and in the use of ICT as instructional media and information sources. This paper describes a component of a recently completed project which sought to determine contemporary views of ICT literacy in tertiary settings and to develop some form of benchmark which could be used to assess levels of ICT literacy appropriate to this domain.