This site is for people in the ACE* or Adult Upgrading programs at Ontario Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) programs who want to upgrade their computer skills in preparation for post-secondary education. We made this site especially for people in programs that do not include digital skills upgrading on site.
It is a companion to the Post-secondary digital skills readiness assessment developed by the College Sector Committee for Adult Upgrading and AlphaPlus.
Learners can use this site on their own or educators can use the site as a resource to develop a digital skills curriculum.
*ACE – Academic and Career Entrance program
In 2018, a college upgrading instructor came to AlphaPlus with an idea.
He had developed an assessment tool to determine whether literacy and adult upgrading (AU)Nlearners were ready for the ways they would be using digital technology as post-secondary students. He wanted to enhance that resource and make it available to all literacy and basic skills (LBS) instructors.
Six other LBS college instructors joined him and worked with AlphaPlus and the College Sector Committee for Adult Upgrading (CSCAU) to determine the digital technology skills that learners need as they enter post-secondary education.
The working group developed assessment tools that college LBS/AU programs can use to help assess their learners’ digital skills readiness for transition to post-secondary studies.
Learners can try out their skills and knowledge in a quiz and a set of holistic assessment activities for Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and Excel. There are two versions of each of the holistic assessment activities that cover the same set of skills in different contexts and that can be used as a pre- and post-assessments.
If learners find that they need to work on a particular skill or suite of skills, we’ve collected learning resources to help with that: Technology Readiness
During this 2017 webinar we explore the digital skills needed for employment, education and independence:
These Essential Skills Ontario (the Ontario anglophone stream organization from 1987 to 2015) sample activities were developed to introduce learners and practitioners to the concept of problem solving within technology rich environment (PS – TRE).
While there are a number of considerations for PS – TRE, the three core dimensions of PS – TRE are:
These sample tasks are aligned with the OALCF (Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework) in that they demonstrate a task – based approach, where goal related tasks and learning activities reflect actual real world use and purposes and reflect a learner’s needs and interests and that demonstrate that they can achieve desired results by drawing on their own toolbox of digital technologies and mental processes. PS – TRE assumes that basic digital and technical skills are already known and they are considered a prerequisite for successful resolution of a problem or task.
DLI Knowledge Sharing: Milestones and digital technology: Assessment and reporting practices (ASL session)
The recording is no longer available but you can view the slides.
See the Research Brief.
See the Research Overview.
See the Full Report.
Assessment Challenges, Contradictions and Inequities: An analysis of the use of digital technology and OALCF Milestones
Christine Pinsent-Johnson
Matthias Sturm
2015
See the Research Brief.
See the Full Report.
See the Presentation.
This overview of program data from LBS programs in Ontario was developed as part of a larger study that investigated the way that the OALCF Use Digital Technology, and Milestones in general, are used in LBS programs. The data was examined to provide a current program overview and a context for understanding the research findings.
This research brief describes program practices that have been put in place in response to the introduction of the OALCF Milestones. It is part of a larger study that investigated the digital technology and OALCF Milestones overseen by AlphaPlus.
With the introduction of the OALCF (Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework) and its aligned reporting system in 2012, Ontario’s Literacy and Basic Skills programs (LBS) have experienced extensive changes in the way they report program activity and demonstrate accountability.
See the Full Report.
See the Research Overview.
Full Research Report
In 2014-15, AlphaPlus was involved in a research project examining current assessment practices related to the OALCF Use Digital Technology Milestones, the alignment between the Milestones and program learning and reporting trends. Our study concludes that the Milestones and accompanying administration guidelines work counter to the ministry’s objective for the OALCF to “improve service delivery, learner experiences and learner outcomes” by introducing a series of challenges, contradictions and inequities.
EOIS-CaMS data and anecdotal information indicated that the OALCF Competency D – Use Digital Technology Milestones were often being selected. We wanted to know why there was a reliance on a limited number of Milestones and determine why assessors were making this choice. An investigation initially focused on digital technology Milestones grew to incorporate a broader investigation of Milestone use in general.
This SDNDF-funded project Assessment Use and Reporting: Investigating Data Integrity Issues gathered information from assessors in LBS programs by way of an online survey and in-person interviews focused on the digital technology Milestones as well as assessment and reporting practices and their impacts on programming. The insights of practitioners with experience using the OALCF Milestones were integral to the project.
Christine Pinsent-Johnson
Matthias Sturm
2015
See the Research Brief.
See the Research Overview.
See the Presentation.