[audio logo]

Speaker 1: Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Theresa Sladek: Well, I'm going to give you first just a sample workflow. Northstar is great because there's so many components to it, but sometimes programs who are starting out with Northstar, that seems daunting. So you can customize Northstar to use it in whatever way works for you and your agency and the people you're working with. And that's kind of me saying here you go.

So I wanted to give you an example of how many organizations use it and kind of a sample workflow just so you have that in your mind as you think about what you want to do with your program. So as a reminder, we have 16 different assessments and then two types of educational materials, the self-directed online learning practice lessons and the instructor led curriculum.

Both can be used either independently or together. And all in Northstar are connected by the Northstar standards, so the assessments and the two types of educational materials. Kind of tying everything together is the learner management system.

And if you remember from last week, adding your learners, adding the learners, the learner management system allows them to access the practice lessons and also makes your data cleaner in terms of the assessments on the reports. And there are multiple reports both for individuals and for your agency as a whole to see how you're using Northstar.

So a typical way that many organizations use Northstar is they will give an assessment first as a pre-assessment. If there are ideally in an ideal world, we would proctor every assessment because if someone passes, they could get a certificate then, but that's not always the way staffing works. So if you have to choose to proctor some and not proctor others, I would usually advocate for a not proctoring the pre-assessment.

Give that to each person so that you can then see and they can see what they already know and where there's an opportunity to learn more. So you're really focusing their time and energy on those topics that they don't know yet.

And you can see that on this example, one of the standards to work on was number four, log into email. Now, if the person wanted to go right from this results page to the practice lessons, they could, and they could just work on standard. Let's say this was a higher score and the only one they had missed was standard four, they could click on the bar bell next to where it says Practice and go just to that standard and the practice lessons.

Because the score is fairly low-- remember that Northstar says you have to have 85% or higher to pass-- then they could go to underneath the orangey bar it says go to NSOL. And NSOL is our acronym for Northstar Online Learning. And if they clicked there, they'd go right to the beginning of the practice lessons.

You don't have to get to the practice lessons from the results page, we just noticed that a lot of times people are kind of excited or want to learn more or show that they can pass these assessments and so they're excited to get started.

So in the practice lessons-- which we will look at more today-- there are three types of screens, basically. One is instructional where people have to read something to learn it. Another is-- or there's audio-- another is instructional, and it's a video. And then the third would look like this where they are actually practicing the skill. And that will be identified by what I've circled in red there, the try it with the barbells. So that instructs them to practice the skill.

All right. You can also provide a Northstar class. And we have a curriculum that's very detailed. It even gives you the words to say, which we'll look at later. And it's nice because every lesson plan-- every lesson, actually, looks the same, so you as instructors will kind of know what to expect from the curriculum.

So you can do, again, just have people do the practice lessons, just do instructor led curriculum or do a combination of both. Once people have gotten that instruction-- is that a word? Then they would retake the assessment. And this time if you do have the staffing capacity, I would proctor it just in case someone passes, they can then get a certificate.

So that's a common way that programs use Northstar. And, again, you're going to tailor it to whatever your needs and your organization's needs and the learner's needs are. So if you have any questions, please let me know. So we have the 16 different assessments. And I want to first talk about how to present the idea of taking an assessment to learners that you're working with.

Oftentimes people who have not always-- but oftentimes people who have low digital literacy skills have maybe had a bad experience-- either no experience in formal education, sometimes a bad experience in formal education. Not always, of course, but there's often a resistance or a-- I would even say fear of taking an assessment because people are worried that it will be used against them.

And so sometimes it-- well, almost always it matters how we present this idea to learners. And so when you propose giving an assessment, it's best to talk about it from the perspective of the learner and how it will actually help them.

So what we know is that by taking an assessment, it really helps the person and the program see where they already have skills and knowledge and where there's an opportunity to learn more. So that is going to make sure that-- one instructor that I was talking to said she always tells the learners that this will help make sure she does her job well so that she knows what she needs to teach. And usually that goes over pretty well with learners.

It helps save time because then they don't have to go over material they already know, and it also helps people view their progress. There's a lot of literature out there that says that adults are often hard on themselves and don't see the progress they're making. And this is can especially be true in longer term educational pursuits like learning English or studying for a high school equivalency.

In a nice way Northstar lets you see your progress on much-- in a much quicker way. So, for example, someone might take a pre-assessment and get a 20%. And then they do some learning and then they take it again and they get a 60%.

They haven't passed, they haven't earned a certificate, but they've tripled their knowledge. And this can be really exciting. I've had people write to me-- actually, a woman in California who went to her local library and learned Northstar wrote to-- had the librarian write to me and say that Despite? The fact that she-- she did go from a 23% to, I think, it was 67% or something like that-- that she was so excited and this is changing her life.

So it can be very impactful to be able to track that progress. Of course, if you're working with someone who's looking to get a job, it's great to take an assessment and pass it so they can put that on their resume or talk about it in an interview.

We've also seen that if someone's going to be taking a computer-based test, let's say the GED, that is more of a high stakes test, costly, time consuming, you don't want that to be their first experience taking a computer-based test.

Northstar is much less intense and is a great way to just practice those test taking skills on a computer so that when someone does get to that, let's say, GED test, they're not having to having that additional barrier of having encountering a computer-based test for the first time.

And so many programs do use it just to practice these skills. We also see many people have test anxiety. And in general, a lot of people who have lower digital literacy skills or no digital literacy skills are kind of afraid of the computer. But just in the regular population or in the general population, there are a lot of people who have test anxiety, and this is a real issue.

My background is I have a bachelor's in biology and a master's in counseling psychology. And so we know that what happens when you're experiencing anxiety is that you're going to be-- you have neurotransmitters that are kind of flooding your brain and effectively blocking a lot of the information from your memory to the working part of your brain.

And so if you can reduce anxiety, people will do better on assessments and on tests. And we actually-- I was part of a study, it was a small study, but that took a class. And everyone took the same assessment, wasn't a Northstar assessment. And then half the class got training on how to reduce anxiety and half the class didn't.

The part of the class that got the training, they all-- everybody took the test again and that half did much better just by reducing their anxiety. So now, of course, I'm not expecting that you're going to be counselors, but there are a few fairly easy things that you can do to help learners feel more comfortable and reduce their anxiety when they're going to take an assessment.

And one of those is just to make sure that someone is kind of breathing. And you might have heard of-- sometimes it's called square breathing or foresighted breathing. But it's basically you take-- and we're going to do this together so follow me but I'll tell you first-- you take two breaths in, you hold it for two and then you let it out for two. And that calms down the nervous system. So let's practice.

So breathe in for two, hold for two, breathe out for two. Breathe in for two, hold for two, breathe out for two. And you should feel yourself relaxing if you weren't already. So this is an easy thing we can do with learners.

Another thing that often happens when people are anxious is that they are inside their heads-- and sometimes you'll hear it out loud-- they're doing what we call negative self-talk. And that is where they're saying things to themselves like, I'll never be able to do this, I'm so stupid, I don't know anything. And so when you present the idea of the assessment, it's good to say it's OK if you don't know anything. That is really good information so that I can be sure to teach you what you need to know.

And there is I don't know button, so people can always use that, but just kind of saying just do what you can and let's see, we'll go from there in terms of what we need to teach you. So kind of countering that negative self-talk with just positive explanations of the assessment.

Now, all of you I know work with learners and have in the past so I'd love to hear of any tips or techniques that you use to help people feel more comfortable when they're taking an assessment. So feel free to unmute or put it in the chat. Any comments?

Jamie: Hi. This is Jamie from Tamar School. Thanks for-- I was doing the breathing and going, wow, I really appreciate that breathing right now during this crazy busy time. And we will often do that with students too. We'll just belly breathing and just sort of visualize yourself doing well, shut out that negative self-talk.

And sometimes just looking at the room where they're going to take that assessment, usually for us it's in a GED high stakes exam or something like that. But just visualizing the room, looking at the room, just familiarizing yourself.

Theresa Sladek: That's a great suggestion. I love that. Also, I know one of the things we did in the study was we had people let them know what they would need-- in a case of Northstar assessment, not much-- but what they would need and let them sort of settle in, or if it was a timed thing, get there ahead of time.

Just so they had a chance to relax instead of rushing in and, like you said, not being maybe used to what the room looks like or the setup looks like. So thank you for sharing that idea. That's great. Yeah, the slow breathing, I can feel myself, as I'm doing it, being like, OK. Even when you're driving it's a good thing to do if you're frustrated in traffic.

Jamie: Can I just say that breathing exercise, our district decided to do it at all our return to school meeting, our first meeting of the year. There was probably 400 people in the room that were doing that breathing, and it was pretty cool.

Theresa Sladek: That is pretty cool. Wow, I would like to see that. That's very cool. Good community building too, it seems. Great, all right. So-- whoops-- as a reminder, Northstar is written at about a grade four reading level. You can see classes 211 or higher.

As we have probably have mentioned, you can definitely use it for people who are lower level, but sometimes the assessments might be too difficult, especially if you're working for a beginning language learners. And so in those situations I probably would not use the assessment especially as a pre-assessment if someone's language level is very low or if their digital literacy level is very low.

If they don't know how to turn on a computer, if they don't really use a smartphone for very much other than texting, it might be frustrating for someone to try and do the assessment. However, you might want to get some kind of idea of what they could know something about, email or searching on the internet.

And so we do have some screeners that are paper and pencil that are much easier to translate into another language if you have someone on staff who can do that, and just get a very basic idea of what someone might know and where to place them.

And I think it's important to note-- you probably all know this-- but it's important to note that just because someone's literacy level in English or Spanish is not high, that does not mean their digital literacy level is not high. So they might speak another language, come from a different country where they have used computers extensively and they just don't know the terminology, but they know how to use them. So just keep that in mind that the two are not necessarily correlated.

But let me show you the screeners. These are in your Northstar admin portal, so let's take a look. My mouse is jumpy today. So we're in-- well, soon we will be in the Northstar admin portal. And if you recall from last week, we're looking at our blue navigation bar up on top. And I'm in the Resources tab toward the middle here.

And you're going to find the screeners in the hodgepodge collection of other resources here in the middle column and the bottom row. So if I click on that and then scroll to the very bottom, you can see there are two screeners here.

And the first one-- and they're both-- one is-- we have them both in English and in Spanish. The first one is just, again, much easier to translate into other languages than a Northstar assessment, let's say. And it just lets you see, do they know what these things are? Are they familiar with the icons that are regularly used in digital literacy? How often do they use a computer and why do they use it?

So this can give you an idea of what someone knows. This can also be really great if you are, let's say, tabling at an event. Where you maybe don't have a internet connection or you don't have a laptop, you can still advertise your services and get people engaged by having them go through one of these little paper assessments, screeners, and then say, hey, we have this class that might meet your needs, for example. So I know many organizations do do that.

The other screener I like better personally but it's more interactive, so, again, much easier to translate into different languages if you have that capacity. But it's asking someone to show you how to do these things and see if they know how to use a mouse and how to open the internet and use headphones. And so it can just give you an idea, is this a person a really, really beginner or do they have some knowledge of digital skills. All right. So those are there for you to use.

So I'm going to go back actually. So we talked last time about proctoring, but, again, if you are going to be giving an assessment to a person who's coming into your agency, who's-- let's say they're sitting right next to you and you're going to have them take an assessment, what are some of the basic things, thinking three stools of digital literacy or digital equity, what are some of the basic things that they're going to need to take a Northstar assessment Northstar online assessment? Basic, basic things.

Audience: Have a computer.

Theresa Sladek: Yep, they're going to need some kind of device and the internet, exactly. We also say that because Northstar has audio, you're probably going to want to have headphones there too if they're going to use the audio.

I would also-- as we spoke about last week, I would recommend adding the learner to the learner management system first just to keep your scores really clean, your stats really clean. Sometimes that's not possible, and that's fine too.

The next thing, once the person's kind of all set up with-- at the device, you have internet connection, the headphones are there is you are going to have them click on the link that takes them to the Northstar assessment.

Now, you can either-- I would bookmark this on the computers or have the link embedded somewhere on your website or go to the Northstar website. It's not as easy for the learner. But each of your organizations has a site specific launch page, that's how you get into your admin portal and that's how learners are tracked to your what we call site.

So that is what you're going to want to bookmark or link to. And in order to do that, you need to know what that URL is. And you're going to find that in your Northstar admin portal. It's in two places in the admin portal.

So the first place is on our blue navigation bar. If we go to where the Northstar logo is-- and on mine it says demo, on yours it would say the name of your school-- here next to the teal location pin-- which is in this teal square-- you'll see there's two bullet points. And the second one says, bookmark the page it takes you to. So that whole long-- you can see why you wouldn't want someone to type it in-- but that whole long URL is what you're going to want to bookmark or link to.

You can also-- if it helps you because you're thinking I'm proctoring-- or I'm not proctoring-- you're giving an assessment, you can go to the Assessment tab in the blue navigation bar and it's also here in the middle where it says Assessment Launch Page. And, again, it's a link here at the bottom.

So you can go either place. And when someone clicks on it, what it looks like to them is it says the name of your organization, your address, no proctor is available. And then if they scroll down, all the assessments are here.

So you're going to have the person click on that link. If they're doing it remotely, same kind of thing, you add them to the learner management system if you have the capacity. And if you do so, then you want to make sure they know the email and password to log in. They need to have a device, they need to have internet connection. And then it's easiest to share that site specific launch page in the chat when you're connecting through some video conferencing platform like Zoom.

So learners can access that site specific launch page. If you have a bookmarked on your computers at your organization, you can send it in the chat. They can also-- let's say they're working in their learner dashboard on the practice lessons and they're ready to take an assessment, they can do that from the learner dashboard. And so they would have logged into the practice lessons and-- whoops.

Then here you can see, let's look at internet basics. On the bottom left there's the Take an Assessment button. You click on that and it again goes to the correct assessment page. And if you scroll down, there are all the assessments.

So we're going to go through the assessment a little bit and-- actually I should go back to that page. I want to show you where you can choose to look at the assessment in Spanish or English, so you can choose your language. So, Hugh, I am now on-- I clicked that site specific URL. Underneath where it says-- on the right hand side where it says validate computer via pin, you'll see the globe. It says language. And my default happens to be English.

You would click on that down arrow and then click Latin American Spanish and wait a little bit. And then you can see everything turns to Spanish. And all the assessments will now be in Spanish. To go back to English you would just do the opposite, or really the same thing, I guess.

When someone is going to take an assessment, what happens is-- let's say they're going to take basic computer skills, when they click on it, they're given the option to check their audio-- which they can either do or skip. They are then given the option to watch an orientation, a very short orientation video. Which, again, they can choose to do that or not.

So many people who take the assessments will skip that orientation video and just go right to the assessment and be able to do it. Some people will want to watch that orientation video and then be able to do the assessments.

Many people, especially those who have low digital skills or low literacy in English or Spanish skills, will need some hand-holding. And that may be many of the learners that you are all working with. So I want to take this opportunity for us to go through the-- we're not going to take the assessment, but I want to go through it with you. And from the point of view that I'm going to be a learner who has never seen this before and I have lower level digital literacy.

Even though when you're doing this you could point to the screen, I want us to practice how we talk about the-- we're going to talk about today the navigation, how you navigate through the Northstar assessment, but use this as an example of how you might talk about digital literacy in general when you're talking to-- when you're teaching classes or you're teaching-- working one on one with someone.

Because people who have low or no digital literacy are often very afraid and doubtful that they're going to be able to learn the information. And so we want to make sure, especially sure, that we are supporting them in learning the material. And it's so easy to assume that people know thing or forget all the small steps that it takes that we all know and have known for a long time, or maybe we'll use jargon without realizing it.

So we want to practice getting down to the really basic way of talking about some of these things. And that's what we're going to do now. So I'm going to click on the Basic Computer Skills Assessment. I'll skip the audio, I'll skip the orientation video and we'll take a look at the assessment.

All right. So you can see that the assessment starts by saying what the assessment is and how many questions there will be. And then here's you click on the rectangle that says Start Now to start the assessment. We'll probably-- actually think I-- I don't know if I've shared my sound with you, which is OK.

Speaker 2: Click on the desktop.

Theresa Sladek: So if you didn't hear it, there's audio that reads the words that are on the screen. What we find is that many times people get very anxious at this point because they hear the audio without realizing that the words are printed on the screen.

And so people will say, wait a minute, I didn't hear-- I need to get-- I need to write this or I didn't understand. So it's helpful to let people know before they start the assessment that what the person in the audio is saying is written in this top left hand corner under the Northstar's symbol. So that helps mitigate some of that anxiety.

Now, when you're new to a screen, and especially if you are new to digital literacy, there's a lot going on this screen. For those of us who are more used to digital literacy, we can hone in on the places that we know we're supposed to look, but that's not the case for someone who's new to digital literacy.

And I don't know if you've ever been working with someone like on a help desk who's trying to explain to you how to use a new system that you've never seen before, but sometimes it's hard to even know where to look. So what we want to practice is basically giving directions and helping people find things on the computer screen because that's going to just help them feel more at ease.

Remembering that even if you spend the time going through the navigation buttons on here and never get to the assessment-- or at least in this first lesson, let's say-- you're still teaching digital literacy. So this is time well spent, it's valuable, and it's going to also improve that connection that you have with the learner to feel-- they are going to feel that you're patient and that you're going to help them through this journey. Which I know all of you are well acquainted with that in your roles in adult basic education.

So if I'm new to this screen, the thing that grabs my attention first to where my eyes go is the pictures here in the middle. And also this gold where it says Not Proctored stands out as well. But let's say that you want to-- so what I'm seeing are these pictures right here, but let's say you are going to teach me about the navigation buttons on this screen.

And when we talk about where things are on a screen, it's very helpful to think about it almost like giving direction, driving directions. So you can talk about, is it on top or-- on the top or up? Is it on the bottom or down? Is it left? Is it right? What color is it? What shape is it? What does it look like. So really getting descriptive in how you describe things can be really helpful.

So the first thing-- so knowing that I'm looking at these pictures, the first place that I want you to direct my gaze to is where my arrow is pointing. So what words could you use-- and you can either chat or unmute, whatever you prefer-- to get me to move my gaze down to that point?

I shouldn't really-- where on the screen is it? What does it look like? Where should my eyes be looking? Go ahead and give me your thoughts. Where is it on the screen? Let's see. I do see something in the chat. Borrow the screen, that's right, in the center. Yeah. What color is it? Color, shape.

Audience: Black, the words are white.

Theresa Sladek: That's right. So it's a black rectangle, right. I don't know if you can see that on your screen. It's a black rectangle with white words. Black ribbon with white text, great. And the more different ways you can describe it, the better, because different people are different and they might notice different things. All right, great. So now this is the I don't know button. Why do we want people to use it? Was it good?

Audience: To get an actual accurate reflection of what they know and what they do not know instead of guessing.

Theresa Sladek: Yes, exactly. Because if they guessed that, they might get it correct and then we wouldn't know that we needed to focus learning time on that skill. So I always say to learners, it's much better to choose I don't know if you really don't than to try and guess because that's going to help them in the long run.

All right, great. So now-- let me get rid of my drawings here-- so now we've been talking about the I don't know button, and now you want to direct my gaze to this. So I'm looking here. Here's my little face. How do you direct me to look where you want me to look?

And, again, of course, if you're next to someone, you can point to the screen, but I want us to practice just describing things in digital literacy to novices. Let's see, the bottom right corner. OK, right. Gray square with two C's, perfect. So here it is. And I'm glad you said with the two C's because that's what we see.

If you had said what they stand for, I as a new to digital literacy wouldn't know what that meant. So it's very good to describe it as it actually looks. So thank you for that. What do the two C stand for? Anybody know?

Audience: Closed caption?

Theresa Sladek: Yep, closed caption. Now, you might say to me, well, Theresa, why do you need closed caption if the words are written up here anyway? And it's a very valid question. In the basic assessments, the first couple of assessments, all the words that the audio says are written on the screen. in some of the more advanced assessments there'll be more audio and then the words on the screen are really encapsulating that information.

So if someone wants to see every single word that the audio is saying, then they would use closed captioning. All right, great. So next we want to-- I want you to get me to look at this symbol. And so we've been looking at the CC button, how would you get me to look at that? And what would you-- how would you describe it? Where is it? What direction is it from CC?

Audience: To the right of the CC.

Theresa Sladek: To the right of the CC, very good. Now, what does this look like? White speaker to the right. It is white. What if I didn't know what a speaker was, what else-- how else could you describe it? It's a hard shape to describe, but how else could you describe it? Here I'm drawing it. What else does it look like if someone didn't know the icon for speaker? A bell, great.

And this is where you can get creative. I've heard a lot of good answers as to what this might look like. So a bell that it does, I agree with that. Anyone see anything else there, this is kind of your chance. A bullhorn? Megaphone, yeah.

Audience: Megaphone, yeah.

Theresa Sladek: Sound button, they might not know that this stands for sound if they're not familiar with digital literacy. We will teach them that but that might not be something that someone instinctively could guess initially. Anyone else see-- I always think it looks kind of like a hat on its side or maybe a triangle, I guess.

It's a hard one to-- it's one of the harder ones to describe, but it sounds like you all know basically what it's used for. Someone said, I would put my hand on my ear. That's great. So it's kind of like that would help them understand what it does, and maybe with the waves coming out, what they're looking for.

So you all have indicated that it has something to do with audio, and, in fact, it does. This button, the only thing it does is it turns on the audio or turns it off. So right now the audio is on. I will share my audio with you so you can hear this. There you go. So right now it's on. And if I played it, it would sound like this.

Speaker 2: Click on the desktop computer.

Theresa Sladek: And then if you want to turn the audio off, you click on this button, and there's an x by it and then the audio is off. That's all this does, off and on.

Speaker 2: Click on the desktop computer.

Theresa Sladek: But to all of the comments that you had, this is-- for those of us who are used to digital literacy-- a very common symbol. And that brings up the concept of digital resiliency, which is something that we want to explicitly be teaching.

And so digital resiliency talks to the fact that many things that we learned in one platform can be transferred to another platform. So you knew that was audio because you have seen it in many other situations and it's basically the same symbol.

That's really important for us to tell learners outright that that's the case. Because oftentimes what we encounter is that someone will say, well, I learned how to do-- to use Word but no one ever taught me how to use Google Docs, or something like that. But they're essentially the same kind of program and then we would expect that they could do similar things in similar ways.

So it's taking that knowledge that we have of one platform and transforming it to-- transferring it, I guess, to another platform. So great to talk about-- to get them to find this shape and then say-- tell them what it does and then say this is a symbol that you're going to encounter all the time in many different digital situations. And that's really, really important to learning digital literacy.

All right. So how about then-- checking our time-- how about this-- where's my annotation? How about this. Where is this located? How would you describe what it looks like? And it's great you're practicing with me because I'm a accomplished learner rather than someone who's new to digital literacy. So this is your chance to practice. Where is it? What does it look like? You don't have to know what it does.

Audience: So we're going to go to the right of the sound button that we just identified. You're going to see two arrows. And we'll want to click on those two arrows.

Theresa Sladek: Great, perfect. All right. And let's see in the chat we have two arrows at the bottom left-- at the bottom right. Sorry, I misread that. Yes, exactly. So two arrows pointing in the opposite directions in the bottom left-- bottom right. I need to get my direction straight. And what happens? What these arrows do is they expand the screen, which you probably knew.

You can see that when I-- I'll do that again. So when they're not expanded, you can see on my screen I've got a lot of extra chatter going on. Which those of us, again, who are used to computers and are familiar with digital literacy, you know what to ignore and what to pay attention to. Just like if you are hearing multiple conversations, you kind of know what words to listen to, the person you're talking to and what you can ignore.

Not as easy for someone who's new to this. So if you do the expand screen, it gets rid of a lot of that noise. And I would say this is much easier for people to look at, especially those who are new to digital literacy, so you might consider that.

OK, so now we have a couple more navigation buttons to look at. And the first one is where the arrow is pointing. So we've been looking at these icons down here. How do I get someone to look at where my arrow is pointing? Where is it? What does it look like?

Audience: So now we're going to go to the top on the right hand side to where we see three lines in the far right.

Theresa Sladek: Great. So we see the three lines. I don't know if you can see them on my screen, but three lines, three dots. You can also say it's underneath this kind of yellow, orange, half oval because that stands out.

And this button-- so thank you for that-- this button is the navigation button. And what it does is it lets us see what the question topics are. And the nice thing about the assessment is that although you can't skip ahead-- so if I'm on question one, I can't click to question six-- I can go back.

So, again, if I had clicked I don't know on question one and then I got to question four I'm like, you know what, actually, I do know the answer to question one. I can always go back and change my answer. In fact, you can change your answer up until you submit your assessment. So that's also helpful for learners to know that maybe it will come back to them and they can change the answer.

All right, so our last navigation button then is right here. And so how would you describe that knowing that we've talked about this symbol with the student, where it is, what it looks like. And you can either chat or unmute. Where is it? Do I see something in the chat? Top right corner, yes.

And what does it look like? What shape is it? What color is it? Let's see. Sound icon with a backwards arrow, great. And remember, unless you've taught the Word icon already, they may not know that word. So, again, you can say the square with the sound picture or-- and it's a good opportunity to teach the Word icon. So we are going to click on that. And what this does is it does to-- this button has two functions. One, if I click on it, it just replays the audio.

Speaker 2: Click on the desktop computer.

Theresa Sladek: As it does so, you can see it brings up this rectangle that in the far right has 1x. That means it's playing the recording at the speed it was recorded at. If I want to speed this up, I can click on that one X and it will go a little bit faster, 1.25 times as fast. I can click on that again and it will go 1 and 1/2 times as fast. And if I click on it a third time, it will go twice as fast.

You can also play the audio slower, but imagine it's on a wheel, so you have to go through faster first before you get to slower. So if I click the 2x, then I find they get to the audio being slower at 0.75 of what it was originally recorded. So just remember it's on that wheel.

All right, great. So, again, not every learner will need to go through this long orientation, but this is really helpful for people who are learning digital literacy, who might be a little nervous about digital literacy and/or who are learning just even what the symbols are or the language of digital literacy. This is a great place to just start even with a class, if you want to just show this screen to get people kind of used to it.

When someone does come to take the assessment, you'll often-- you've been working with them, they're starting to develop a connection to you, they're trusting you, they see you as helpful, they'll often ask you for the answers. Not trying to cheat but just, again, seeing you as someone who's been helping them.

This is an assessment so you can't help with the answers. And how it usually happens is someone will say, do you think I should choose this one or this one? Or, what does desktop mean? Or, I don't know, which one of these would you choose? And so, again, it's no-- there's no value in helping them choose the answer because then it's not really reflecting what they actually know and they aren't going to learn the material that they need to learn.

But what you can say is, I can't help you with the assessment, but it's great for you to choose the I don't know button and to click on that. I was going to say something but I forgot. So any questions about the navigation buttons or-- well, I'll stop there. Any questions about the navigation buttons or what they do? OK.

So, again, just remember this exercise, the point of it was mostly to get you thinking about when you're teaching digital literacy, you really want to make sure you're meeting people where they're at and how you describe things. And you think about all the little tiny things that we just talked about that many of us take for granted in knowing that someone new to this doesn't know.

So just keeping that in the back of your mind and knowing that, again, even if you're teaching people what CC stands for, you are teaching digital literacy. So don't feel like it's a waste of time. It's really actually very essential and a good solid foundation. So after someone takes an assessment, they will get the results page. And anyone remember what the passing score is?

Audience: 80%.

Theresa Sladek: A little bit higher, 85%, yes. So 85% is our passing score. There are a few things that I want to make sure you know that I sometimes hear from learners these questions not very often. So, again, I probably won't explain this to someone unless they ask me for the-- ask me the question, but I want you to know in case they do ask.

So one of the questions that we get asked is, you can see in the green column it tells me that I got 29 correct. And someone may say to you, well, I got 29 correct on this internet basics assessment and passed, but I got 29 correct on using email assessment and didn't pass. Why not?

The answer is a mathematical answer. Why would it be that I could get 29 on internet basics and pass and 29 correct on using email and not pass? It's the percent. So it could be that there's 34 questions here on internet basics, maybe there's 40% on using email. So the number of total questions isn't the same from assessment to assessment Yes, thank you.

All right. Another question that occasionally we'll get is someone will say, this is internet basics and I got 29 out of 34 and I passed, but on Word I got 29 out of 34 and didn't pass. Why not? And again, it's a mathematical answer. Anyone know what it might be. So I got 29 out of 34 on internet basics and passed, but got 29 out of 34 out of 34, the same number, on Word and didn't pass. Why would that be?

Audience: Questions are weighted differently.

Theresa Sladek: Exactly, the questions are weighted. So some questions have multiple components to them and so a person might get it partially right. All right, great. The other question-- the last question that sometimes we'll get is you can see on this results page that standard five was missed. And sometimes people will say-- in the gray column there. Sometimes people will say, well, question five, I know I got question five right. And they probably did.

It's important to know that the question numbers and the standard numbers are not one to one correlated. So question five may have a totally different standard in it or multiple standards in it, and standard five might be in multiple questions. So just so you know that the question numbers and the standard numbers don't match.

So I said when-- oopsie-- when someone, after they take their pre-assessment, they may want to do the practice lessons. And so I want to show you just, again, give you an introduction on how to talk to students about the learner dashboard and the practice lessons.

All right. So we're going to look at the practice lessons and how to talk to learners about that. So people can either go to that URL that you have and then log in or if they're from at home and they don't have access to that URL, they can go to the Northstar home page and the login looks the same from each of them.

So let's go to the home page. Whether they go to your URL or just the Northstar home page, you will see-- I'm going to log out so you can see this. And my computer really likes me to be logged into Northstar so this is what it would look like. So here I am at the Northstar home page. But, again, if they had taken an assessment with you, it'd be-- they'd be down here and they could just go up to the top of the home page. So they wouldn't even have to scroll up. It's on the black navigation bar here.

So if they're taking an assessment or if they're down here, if they click to your URL, in this black navigation bar you see the Northstar logo on the left and over on the far right you see the gray oval with the words log in. They'd click on that and they'd enter their email address and their password that they had created or you had created for them, and then click on the blue login oval.

Where they will end up is not here because I am playing various roles here, but they will end up on their learner dashboard. What we're going to get to in a second. Now, this first question they won't have. That's because I belong to several different sites. But they will have the second question where it says, right now are you physically at the Northstar location?