TOWES - The Test of Workplace Essential Skills

Abstract:

Bow Valley College, a public college in Calgary, and SkillPlan, the British Columbia Skills Improvement Council, have joined forces to develop a new assessment of workplace literacy skills called TOWES. TOWES exists as a text bank of problem sets that use authentic workplace documents (diagrams, charts, labels, forms, manuals) together with actual re-created tasks as source materials. TOWES is based on leading edge Canadian research. The scales used to measure literacy skills are from the International Adult Literacy Survey. The national occupational standards were developed by the Essential Skills Research Project. TOWES uses the scales and standards to measure literacy in 3 domains - reading text, document use and numeracy. TOWES is used by industry for recruitment assessment and training. In education, the test bank can be used for candidate assessment, training and graduation certification. The test developers have just completed a massive 4000 person National Linking Study to create high standards of validity and reliability. The test bank is ready for wide spread use by the Canadian business and education sectors.

Presenters:

Conrad Murphy
Linda Fownes

Conrad Murphy has been a college educator for better than 20 years. His background is as an instructor in basic education and subsequently as a manager of community programs. He has been involved in the area of workplace literacy training for about 12 years. Conrad's current duties are as the Director of Business Development at Bow Valley College. In this role, Conrad is responsible for developing sales relationships with the business community and the development of new products.

Linda Fownes - Executive Director of SkillPlan.

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