Assessing the Complexity of Literacy Tasks
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Tuition and Education amounts (full-time)

7. Tuition and Education Amount (full-time)

Those with tuition fees will have to choose between this and the following line to enter tuition and education amounts. With only four letters difference between the two headings, each is a significant distractor for the other, making the match on the correct category less likely for some. However, answering the question, “Do I get a tax credit for my tuition and living expenses if I am a full-time student?” is still a straightforward match between the search term and the wording on the form. (Level 1 document task) Ignore the qualifications about certified institution and designated educational institution in this and the next section; the person making a claim here would know that they were eligible for an official tax receipt and would not have to decide about eligibility.

When the form-filler has located section 7 on page 4, he or she is presented with a series of entry and calculation tasks. Deciding whether a calculation is one task or several can be simplified if you consider the completion of one instruction to be a single task. The reason these calculations are organized line-by-line is to break larger operations into more manageable chunks.

The first task is to enter your tuition fees. For those students who have attended more than one school or course, this is an invitation to locate and total (add) any tuition fees from certified sources. Type of operation: addition (1). Specificity of operation: numbers not in column format (1); numbers not adjacent (+1); labels and amounts identified without search (+0); operation easily inferred (+2); numbers present (+0); no transformation (+0); total rating 4. There are probably some distractors for the requested information, tuition fees.

Type
Quant.

Level
2

ToO
1

SoO
4

PoD
2

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