Computer Skills Assessment
Introduction
This assessment is designed to briefly assess your computer skills. As our computing devices have become more sophisticated, many core computing skills as as keyboard shortcuts, file management, and navigating sections in a document 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 skills. Instead, it quickly spot checks them. 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.
Guidelines
The assessment is modular. Each section can be completed independently in a few minutes. It should take around 10 minutes to complete in full.
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.
Work with each section online. Copy-paste relevant sections into a Word or Google Doc.
Download the Word version of this assessment. From there, you can complete each section in Google Docs or Microsoft Word. This allows you to
save your work and
avoid rote copy-pasting text into a new Word document or Google Doc.
Tutorials
You can find tutorials on computer skills at https://swat-ssql.github.io/computer-skills-tutorials.
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.
Theory and Practice
If you are unable to complete the tasks, don’t fret! Just like learning the piano, you need both theory and practice.
Theory: 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.