Computer Games

The 2004 technology assessments included eight assessment tasks relating to technology and society.

Seven of the tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8 students. The other task was given only to year 8 students.

One is a trend task (fully described with data for both 2000 and 2004), four are released tasks (fully described with data for 2004 only) and three are link tasks (to be used again in 2008, so only partially described here).

The task details and results for the trend task are presented in the first section, followed by the task details and results for the released tasks. The third section contains some task information and the results for the link tasks.

Comparing Results for Year 4 and Year 8 Students
Averaged across 89 task components completed by both years, nine percent more year 8 than year 4 students or teams produced correct or strong responses. This indicates that, on average, students have made modest progress between year 4 and year 8 in the skills and understandings assessed by the tasks.

Trend Results: Comparing 2000 and 2004 Results
One trend task involving 13 components was administered to students in both the 2000 and 2004 assessments. Because there was only one trend task, the results must be viewed with considerable caution.

For year 4 students, there was a small improvement from 2000 to 2004, with on average three percent more students succeeding with the task components in 2004. The 2004 students scored higher on nine components and lower on two, with no change on two more components. For year 8 students there was a small decline between 2000 and 2004, with on average four percent fewer students succeeding with the task components in 2004. The 2004 students scored higher on five components and lower on eight.