Greg Kochanski

Is the ECDL worth the bother?

I was looking at the ECDL just now, because it's offered in my son's school. I told them no, we didn't want to sign up, because the time spent could be better spent on the normal school curriculum.

So, what's the problem with the ECDL?

• First, some of the questions are wrong and/or misleading. Consider these sample questions from the version 4.5 sample paper (the sample on the ECDL/British Computer Society web site as of 24/11/2008):

  Which type of computer do you use to operate large corporate systems and databases?

  • A.Desktop computer.
  • B.Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).
  • C.Mainframe.
  • D.Laptop.

  They probably want "C", but all the answers make sense. Google, for instance, runs their search engine with a farm of over 100,000 PCs that are essentially desktop computers (A). Or, even if a corporation has a mainframe, people often operate it from their desktop computer (A), or laptop (D). Finally, delivery services like UPS, DHL, and ParcelForce give a small computer to each delivery person; they use that PDA-like device (B) to enter package tracking data etc. It is their interface to the central corporate computer systems. So, as you can see, all the answers make sense. Mainframes were the dominant corporate computer back in the 1980s, but since then, a lot of variety has grown.

• Or, this question:

  The speed of the central processing unit (CPU) is measured in:

  • A.Megahertz (MHz).
  • B.Bits per second (Bps).
  • C.Gigabytes (GB).
  • D.Megabytes (MB).

  This question is out of date. Why? Well, since about 2002, clock rates of CPUs have been measured in Gigahertz rather than Megahertz. But, that's actually an unimportant quibble. The real problem is that the intrinsic physics of silicon limits computer clock rates to about 4 GHz, and we've been near that limit since 2003. (It's partially a question that if the electrons move too fast, they radiate phonons (sound/heat waves) and slow down. Partially, it's a question of too much power dissipation in too little space (every time the clock ticks, current flows through the transistors to charge and discharge stray capacitances within the CPU; the faster the clock ticks, the more of this current must flow, and the more heat is produced.)

  So, by the ECDL's measure, all modern computers would be more-or-less the same speed. But they don't, of course. Newer computers have more processors. They have larger caches so that they do not have to wait to access memory so often. They also have more transistors so that they can do more complex instructions in a single clock cycle. As a result, the modern 2.2 GHz computer I'm typing this on is about 8 times faster than the old 2.4 GHz computer across the room from me.

• The ECDL is focussed more on names than ideas. For instance:

  What is HTTP?

  • A.Hyperlink Transfer Protocol.
  • B.Hyperlink Transmission Procedure.
  • C.Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
  • D.Hypertext Transmission Procedure.

  Yes, it's good to know the name. But it would be better if the test forced you to have even a vague idea of what a protocol is. This kind of question encourages students to acquire a shallow knowledge.

Now, there are some parts of the test that rise up to provide at least a modest challenge. Some of the spreadsheet and database questions have answers that your average computer user probably wouldn't accidentally learn. Still, that's not enough to over-ride the other bits. And even then, the questions are just about manipulations of mouse, menu and keyboard. No problem solving is involved: in the test, you are told what to do and simply do it. What the ECDL does is to show that someone can do basic manipulations with a computer, if someone tells them EMPH what to do.

In a sense, it is a test for people who want the classical secretarial job of the last century, when secretaries were expected to take dictation and type memos. Such positions are almost gone - the bosses do the typing now, and the secretaries have morphed into administrators who need to do a lot more than just run a word processor.

See also one of the Wall Street Journal blogs.

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