Coming August 2015… PIAAC Education and Skills Online

Coming August 2015… Education and Skills Online
Education and Skills Online Assessment (ESO), the individual assessment linked to PIAAC, will be released in early August 2015. Like the PIAAC 2012 main assessment, ESO will measure the cognitive skills (literacy, numeracy, reading components, and problem solving in technology-rich environments,) of adults age 16 and older. ESO will also include a non-cognitive module which will assess behavioral performance competencies, subjective well-being and health, career interest and intentionality, and skills use at work and at home. In the United States, ESO will be available in English and Spanish and assessments will be downloadable on demand over the Internet. It is appropriate for use in both educational and workplace settings.  Businesses, government agencies, community colleges, vocational education and training centers, and other organizations that want to test these workforce-readiness skills can purchase the assessments. For example, a state or county workforce board could sponsor the use of ESO and administer the assessment to people in their region or particular populations in their region (e.g. prison population, unemployed population, or disadvantaged adults). The sponsoring organization will have flexibility to determine which skills to assess and will own the data and results. After the individual takes the assessment, ESO generates an individualized report that summarizes the non-cognitive areas selected and the strengths and weaknesses in each cognitive area assessed. ESO also provides scores reported by proficiency levels. All results are comparable with, and can be benchmarked against, the national and international results of PIAAC 2012.

You can test your PIAAC skills today using a demonstration of ESO available through the OECD website. You can also download the PIAAC Outreach Toolkit on ESO.

Source: American Institutes for Research newsletter, The Buzz, July 2015


David J. Rosen

Technology and Learning CoP Moderator

djrosen123@gmail.com