Educational Testing Service announced April 18, 2007, that it has changed the name of its ICT Literacy Assessment to the iSkills™ Assessment. ETS also is introducing new, customizable score reports for institutions, and reducing the price of the testing.

iSkills measures information and communication technology (ICT) literacy—a student’s ability to use critical thinking to analyze, manage, and communicate information in a technological environment. Students perform 15 information problem-solving tasks, such as researching a topic from a database, identifying authoritative and unbiased websites, or composing an email summary of research findings.

“We selected iSkills as the new name because it is more spirited and better reflects the nature of this very different type of assessment…it’s interactive and really very cutting edge,” said Mary Ann Zaborowski, ETS’s Director of Product Management for the iSkills assessment.

“Efforts across campus to inspire curriculum reform to address the ICT skills we know many students lack have been driven mainly by home grown survey data and anecdotal evidence that, for the most part, fail to provide a clear vision for effective change,” says David Dettman, Head of Library Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. “With the iSkills assessment, libraries and academic departments are able to easily gather and persuasively package detailed assessment data from a test created by a recognized leader in the testing field (with input from faculty, administrators, and librarians). This allows for a level of detail and a measure of credibility that would be nearly impossible to achieve with ‘in house’ assessment instruments. UW-Green Bay and other institutions can now begin to establish a culture of evidence chronicling student learning that can serve not only to guide curriculum decisions but also to demonstrate to the outside world that the educational product has value.”

ETS is also introducing two new score reports for institutions, which will give comparative data so institutions can compare their students’ performance with students from similar institutions. The Institutional Skill Area Report provides student performance data on each of the seven skill areas measured, compared to the performance of a reference group. The Aggregate Task Performance Feedback Report presents data on how students performed on each of the components of the tasks. The reports are customizable by student population reported; student group, for group comparisons; and name of the report.

For more information about ETS’s iSkills assessment, and to view an online demo, visit www.ets.org/iskills. ETS is a nonprofit institution with a long-held commitment to advance learning. The mission of ETS is to advance quality and equity in education by providing fair and valid assessments, research, and related services for all people worldwide. ETS customizes solutions to meet the need for teacher professional development products and services, classroom and end-of-course assessments, and research-based teaching and learning tools. Founded in 1947, ETS develops, administers, and scores more than 24 million tests annually in more than 180 countries.