Products > TechLiteracy Assessment

Question Types and Examples

Performance-based questions
TechLiteracy Assessment enables students to authentically demonstrate that they can navigate within spreadsheet, word processor, database, browser, and presentation applications, and perform complex tasks. The simulated software has realistic menus and functionality and is deliberately generic, not representing any specific software brand or version. This generic representation enables the assessment to measure durable technology literacy skills that students need as they encounter different software at school, home, libraries, online, and in the future.

In the example shown below, students must navigate within a simulated word processor to change the page margins. Skills such as these can only be authentically measured by enabling students to actually perform the task in software. Multiple choice and rote, memory-based sequence questions would not assess the students’ ability to perform the task, and the correct answer would typically only be true of one brand and specific version of the software. In addition, a hot-spot based question that presents students with a single step to click on in a screenshot does not assess the ability to perform a complex task. In contrast, enabling students to demonstrate that they can navigate through an application and find and perform the steps to accomplish the task is an authentic assessment. Performance-based questions have as many as 12 correct answers, any of which would be scored correct.

In the example below, students are required to choose the best source for valid information. The links and advertisements are realistic distracters that cause the mouse arrow to become a hand that can select. For this question, the realistic controls of the simulated browser also become distracters.

Multiple choice questions
TechLiteracy Assessment uses two types of multiple choice questions: graphical and text-based.

In the question shown below, students must make a design decision.

The example shown below is a text-based multiple choice question. To ensure that we are measuring technology proficiency rather than reading skills, questions for the fifth-grade assessment are written at the third-grade reading level, and questions for the eighth-grade assessment are written at the sixth-grade reading level.