College Computer Skills Assessment

Author

Ella Foster-Molina, Swarthmore’s Social Sciences Quantitative Laboratory

Introduction

This assessment should take around 10-20 minutes to complete in full.

The assessment is designed to briefly assess your efficiency with core college level computer skills: mouse skills, keyboard shortcuts, file and folder management, and organization within a document. As our computing devices have become more sophisticated, many of these skills have become less familiar. Yet these skills streamline all work on a computer. They also open the door to more advanced computing such as complex research projects, coding, and quantitative analyses.

The assessment does not comprehensively test your efficiency. Instead, it quickly spot checks it. If any of the tasks within a section are unfamiliar, you are likely missing other related skills as well. If so, practice a more comprehensive set of computer skills in the tutorials.

Depending on your screen size, links to each section of the assessment will appear either in the left hand navigation panel or from the list icon at the top left of the screen. A link the next section is also included at the bottom right of each section.

Guidelines

The assessment is modular. Each section can be completed independently in a few minutes.

The assessment is a spot check of your skills. To test yourself fairly, do not look through the tasks before starting them.

There are two ways to complete the assessment.

  1. Work with each section in this online webbook. Copy-paste relevant sections into a Word or Google Doc.

  2. Download the Word version of this assessment. From there, you can complete each section in Google Docs or Microsoft Word. This allows you to

    1. save your work and

    2. avoid rote copy-pasting text into a new Word document or Google Doc.

Tutorials

You can find tutorials on computer skills online at https://swat-ssql.github.io/computer-skills-tutorials or download a local copy.

  • If you are confident in your skills for any or all sections, complete the relevant section(s) of this assessment without the tutorials. If you complete it easily, congratulations! You likely know most of the skills in each completed section.

  • If you are not confident in your skills, complete the tutorials first.

Skills and Practice

If you are unable to complete the tasks, don’t fret! Just like learning the piano, computer skills require knowledge of the skills. They also require applying the skills through practice. You can train your fingers to dance over the computer keyboard like a pianist’s fingers dance over piano keys.

Skills: Work through the tutorials at https://swat-ssql.github.io/computer-skills-tutorials. You can also Google topics such as “computer shortcuts,” “file management,” and “navigation pane” to find additional tips and tricks.

Practice: Spend time practicing the skills. Play Minesweeper and Solitaire on your computer.

Come back to the assessment once you feel prepared.