Keyboarding assessments for elementary school students: Can they be uniform?

Keyboarding has become a common writing mode, yet standardized keyboarding tests for elementary-school students are almost non-existent. Such tests are vital to determine whether students' keyboarding skills are within the expected norms, and identify students with poor keyboarding skills. Moreover, it is important to define the principles underlying the tests' development to enhance their validity, reliability and universality. To address these needs we conducted two studies that aimed to establish the feasibility and psychometric properties of two keyboarding tests for elementary-school students: The Hebrew Keyboarding Assessment (H-KBAT; Study 1, including 93 students in 4th and 6th grades) and the Arabic Keyboarding Assessment (A-KBAT; Study 2, including 54 in 4th and 5th grades). The tests were developed based on the same underlying principles, ecological validity and practicality. Students performed copying and dictation tasks, scored for speed and accuracy. Results showed that the tests were feasible. Older students typed significantly faster and more accurately than younger students, reflecting the expected developmental trend in keyboarding performance and supporting the tests' construct validity. The tests also showed convergent validity with respect to the speed measure. It appears that the H-KBAT and A-KBAT are promising tests that may help educators and clinicians evaluate elementary-school students' keyboarding abilities. Moreover, the similar results of the two studies, even though they relate to different languages, suggest that by using similar underlying principles, tasks and keyboarding measures, it may be possible to develop a uniform keyboarding test in other languages, thus enabling cross-national and language comparisons.