My colleague Lorna has now taken the first step on her way to gaining her ECDL qualification and updates us on her progress…..

After a delay of a couple of weeks and much badgering from my colleagues who wanted an update on progress, I’ve finally found a spare lunch hour to try my first diagnostic assessment for my ECDL Module 1, the Basic Concepts of IT.

The beauty of completing a diagnostic assessment prior to embarking on the learning content for my ECDL qualification is that I can accurately assess the areas where I already have the required knowledge. I use a PC all day so I hope I’ve acquired some along the way! These would be areas that I don’t need to carry out any additional learning, on the flip-side it will flag the areas that I need to spend some more time on before I’d be in a position to sit for my ECDL module test.

The diagnostic rather generously gave me 45 minutes to answer 50 questions and being a highly efficient (and very busy) Product Manager I worked through the questions in just over 10 minutes as I munched my sandwich. The time flew by and because the question types were so varied I didn’t have the opportunity to get bored with the assessment.

Perhaps more importantly for the ‘exam phobic’ amongst us it didn’t actually feel like I was taking a test. There were a couple of questions that my computer brain was a bit rusty on so I was forced to make a few educated guesses and to my horror a couple I had no idea at all on! I submitted my final question response with some trepidation about the contents of the results screen that would follow. To my absolute delight it informed me that I’d passed my Module 1 diagnostic test – woo hoo!

After the initial euphoria had worn off I thought I’d better now drill down into the report and see exactly where my strengths and weaknesses had been, so that this could direct my learning once I start my Skills Suite for ECDL course on-line. My 39 questions answered out of the 50 showed that there were some areas that I could brush up on with some more instruction which is where I will be focussing my efforts. I’ll be accessing the relevant sections in our ECDL courseware over the coming weeks whenever I get some free time and hope to be ready to sit my Module 1 ECDL test soon, once I’ve registered with one of our test centres.

I’ll let you know when I’m taking my module 1 test so keep checking back on my progress.