Overview

Computer and information literacy (CIL) focuses on understanding computer use, gathering information, producing information, and communicating digitally.

Computational thinking (CT) focuses on conceptualizing problems and operationalizing solutions.

The International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) is a computer-based international assessment of 8th-grade students’ capacities to use information communications technologies (ICT) productively for a range of different purposes, in ways that go beyond a basic use of ICT in two domains.

When it was first conducted in 2013, ICILS assessed students’ CIL with an emphasis on the use of computers as information-seeking, management, and communication tools. Twenty-one education systems around the world participated in ICILS 2013. Thereafter, increasing international focus on the importance of students’ abilities to recognize and operationalize real-world problems using computational formulations led to the development of the CT component within ICILS.

The second cycle of ICILS, administered in 2018, continued to assess CIL and added CT as an optional assessment component. The United States participated in ICILS for the first time in 2018, along with 13 other education systems.

The third cycle of ICILS, administered in 2023, continued measuring international differences in students’ CIL—with an emphasis on the use of computers to investigate, create, participate, and communicate at home, at school, in the workplace, and in the community—and CT (as an optional component)—with an emphasis on computational formulation, and evaluating and developing algorithmic solutions to real-world problems that can be operationalized with a computer. A total of 35 education systems, including the United States, participated in ICILS 2023.

ICILS is sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and is conducted in the United States by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The study allows the United States to monitor U.S. students’ skills and experience using technology, compare U.S. students’ skills internationally, and provide data on factors that may influence students’ CIL and CT skills. The data collected through ICILS provide valuable information with which to understand the nature and extent of the “digital divide” and inform our understanding of the relationship between technology skills/experience and student performance in other core subject areas.

U.S. results for the 2023 test administration are available on the NCES ICILS 2023 results web page.

For more information about what is assessed in ICILS, click here.