Students Computer Literacy: Covariate For Assessing The Efficacy Of Computer Assisted Learning Tools

The purpose of this paper is to focus attention on the need to more rigorously measure computer-specific student characteristics when assessing the efficacy of computer assisted learning tools and benchmarking a curriculum's impact. It accomplishes this by first modeling learning outcomes assessment, identifying appropriate instruments, and discussing the absence of such measures in accounting education research. Then, the measurement process employed by the authors is discussed. The unsurprising results reveal statistically significant differences in computer anxiety and perceptions of computer skills across the student population. The significant implication is that heterogeneity must be controlled for when assessing resource-intensive computer assisted learning methods: Failure to do so will impair educators ability to determine the efficacy of computer assisted learning and the curriculum's contribution to students development.