Today’s post comes courtesy of Arshan Kaiserimam, ThirdForce’s Product Manager

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published the results of the PISA Survey 2009 recently. This is a massive cross country survey undertaken by the OECD every three years, where the data shows how well countries are doing in various education areas – primarily in reading, mathematics and science. This year’s survey focused on reading amongst 15 year olds, but more interestingly, it was on “digital reading” – that is the understanding of digital information, and how well this is achieved.

 The survey’s findings are as follows (look away now if you don’t like spoilers!):

 “Korea and Finland are the highest performing OECD countries, with mean scores of 539 and 536 points, respectively. However, the partner economy Shanghai-China outperforms them by a significant margin, with a mean score of 556.” – OECD, Pisa 2009 Executive Summary

 What’s particularly interesting is that these countries are not one who spends the most per GNP on education. Some are to be expected, but I was surprised with these findings.

 The really remarkable part of the results however, was that there appears to be no positive link between using a computer in the school environment, and the proficiency of digital reading.  Where there was a positive link, it was with users who used IT at home – they correlated positively to results of digital reading.

 Now this should not be taken as an immediate indication of anything – these are somewhat raw statistics, and some more context and understanding of the variables would be needed before you can put in place a positive link.  But it is fascinating – we can conjecture that it was not the formal education of learners in IT that produced the best results, but the informal education received by being in their home environment, and using online resources without a formal framework, that led to an increase in digital reading skills.

 What does that say about the way that we deliver teaching and e-learning? We already look to integrate new instructional design and interaction into our training, but I would love to hear your thoughts on what you think these results mean. Over to you…