Committee votes to eliminate CIL tests
The motion to remove Computer and Information Literacy (CIL) tests from graduation requirements was passed in a 14-2 vote Tuesday morning through the General Education subcommittee.
The motion will be brought to the Education Policy committee in December to further its progress so that it may be implemented by the summer of 2011.
“What was decided by the committee was there has been a transition and a change in what students need,” said ASUSU President Tyler Tolson. “When the CIL tests came up, students weren’t really computer literate, so this was a great track to take, but now students are coming to school computer literate.”
Removing CILs from graduation requirements is two years in the making, and issues caused by the tests were first brought to the foreground by 2008-09 ASUSU president Grady Brimley and his council.
“In theory, people were supposed to take the CIL by the end of their freshman year so they could move efficiently through the rest of their coursework,” said Norm Jones, General Education subcommittee chair. “But, people weren’t taking it on time and weren’t able to graduate.”
He said students sending in appeals stating they could not graduate because of their CILs was common, and attaching CIL requirements to English classes was leaving seats empty in those classes.
Tolson said a few people on the committee were alarmed by the majority vote that passed the ban of CIL requirements because their jobs are directly related to CIL testing. However, if the CILs are no longer required after the upcoming vote by the Educational Policy committee, Tolson said his hope is to still have a computer literacy resource center to help students who need those skills.
If the removal of the tests is passed through all the committees, the $30 CIL fee will be removed.
“If it’s a needed resource, I don’t think the university will have a hard time sending funding that way,” Tolson said.
Freshman elementary education major Kallyn Austin said she has taken two of her CILs so far because it was required in a freshman orientation class.
“I know how to use my computer,” she said. “I don’t need silly little tests to tell me what I need to know about my computer. If you’ve never used a computer in your life before, I guess it is beneficial.”
Shahriar Kabir, a graduate student in management information systems, said he was required to take the CILs to graduate and believes they are necessary to USU students’ education.
“They shouldn’t cancel it,” Kabir said. “I think everyone needs to have some computer literacy. There are a lot of basic things that look simple, but doing it yourself and finding things on the programs takes practice.”
One of the proposals for the future is to have a diagnostic test that sums up all the tests.
“It has also been proposed that the ethics portion of the CIL tests be retained after seeing a couple hundred copy-and-paste plagiarisms,” Jones said.
The committee discussed saving the ethics portion of the CILs as a test to gain access to the library.
“We remain concerned that everyone has computer literacy, but this particular method wasn’t working,” Jones said.
– catherine.meidell@aggiemail.usu.edu