Background
Information Literacy and IT Skills are essential competencies for academic scholars. The institute attaches great value that you have the required skills. The Office of Library and IT Services (OLITS) coordinates a number of training activities. An ECDL diagnostic test lets you assess your current IT skills level for the most used software packages: Ms Windows, Internet Explorer en email, Ms Word, Ms Excel and Ms PowerPoint. Your assessment results will tell you which IT skills you want to be trained in, but also indicate in which fields you have the required level already.

Contents of ECDL
ECDL offers you five modules. Each module comprises some 65 questions. The recommended order in which you take the assessment is: 1) Ms Windows XP; 2) Internet Explorer and Email; 3) Ms Word 4) Ms PowerPoint and 5) Ms Excel. Questions about Ms Outlook are mostly general questions about the use of email software and therefore relevant to the use of the ISS mail program FirstClass.

ISS also offers its employees and PhD fellows the official ECDL exams. The ECDL exam certificate is issued when 4 exams or more are successfully completed. International organizations require ICDL/ECDL certificates as proof of sufficient office IT Skills. ECDL is offered free of cost by ISS to employees and PhD fellows.

Link to training
The review of incorrect answers is what you should be most interested in. It will help you identify your training needs. It is also important to understand that the diagnostic test is a self-assessment and not an exam: it is meant to provide you with an indication of your general “computer” or ‘IT’ skills. The tests provide us, OLITS, with the necessary overall information to organize institute wide assessment and IT workshops. Training guides for each topic are available in sufficient numbers in the library [search with title word ECDL in the catalogue]. Staff Development courses will be announced.

The ECDL assessment can in theory be undertaken at any time, online, on an internet-connected computer (both inside ISS and at home). We provide scheduled hours in room 2.38, to offer you space and time, away from other distractions. The supporting java software, necessary for ECDL has been installed already on the 2.38 computer. It is recommended to always start the first module in 2.38 to get familiar with the system.

We estimate that 50 minutes should be set aside for each module. You can logout and login as often as you like. Upon completion of a module, a score (percentage of right answers) is provided. At completion of an ECDL module, also the opportunity is also provided to print/view the answers that were not correct. A score of over 75% for a diagnostic test is an indication that you are ready to proceed to certification ( “the exam”). A lower score indicates the need to review some of the skills or the need for following a basic course.

Practical Matters
To start ECDL, you are requested to send an email to John Steenwinkel for the one-time creation of an ECDL account. Under normal circumstances this will be ready within a few days, so that you can start not later than one week after your request.
ECDL diagnostic tests can be done in the staff training room 2.38. An exam must be done in 2.38, the official ECDL test centre. Assistance will be available there on Tuesday 9 – 10.15am and Thursday, 11.45am - 12.45pm for the diagnostic tests. Exams are always supervised.

The website: test.ecdl.nl
In the diagnostic test, you may go back to previous questions and revise the given answer. You may interrupt a module session, logout and restart later. Once you ask or accept the ‘score’ you have completed the assessment and can no longer ‘re-do’ a module. Stopping the self-assessment prematurely, by asking the score before you complete the module, results in a low score.

Although the first web page contains a few words of Dutch, the tests and interface are all in English.

ECDL personal account details will be provided when you send-in your request to John Steenwinkel

(A copy of the Dutch text is attached.)