Assessing knowledge change in computer science

Nash, Justin M.; Bravaco, Ralph; Simonson, Shai

doi:10.1080/08993400500430362

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…It can be argued that such a short instruction time is not long enough to effectuate sustainable cognitive effects. Indeed, an analysis of the instruction or practice time in some structural assessment studies shows much longer periods varying from a semester in statistics (Acton et al 1994), a 16 week course on psychological research techniques (Goldsmith et al 1991), a three week course in physiology (McGaghie et al 2000), an 80 h computer programming workshop (Nash et al 2006) to a three day training in a computer game (Day et al 2001). However, structural assessment has also been reported to be effective as well with training times less Our exploration has also exposed some avenues for future research.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This method can be valuable because it makes a shift in understanding more concrete. For example, Nash et al (2006) found that teachers regarded the concept 'inheritance', which is a fundamental concept in object oriented programming, to be more prominent after a training (it was the highest degree node and the median node), while before the training the concept was no focal node.…”

Section: Structural Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Beside the similarity score researchers also have suggested to analyze and compare the central concepts in the knowledge structures and whether instruction will yield changes in what is regarded as the central concepts (Dayton et al 1990;Nash et al 2006). In order to analyze the central concepts these researchers propose three indices of a focal node: the highest degree node, the median node and the center node.…”

Section: Structural Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Measuring learning in serious games: a case study with structural assessment

Wouters

Spek

Oostendorp

2011

Education Tech Research Dev

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The effectiveness of serious games is often measured with verbal assessment. As an alternative we propose Pathfinder structural assessment (defined as measuring the learners' knowledge organization and compare this with a referent structure) which comprises three steps: knowledge elicitation, knowledge representation and knowledge evaluation. We discuss practical and theoretical considerations for the use of structural assessment and showcase its application with the game Code Red: Triage. Results suggest that structural assessment measures an individual's understanding of a domain at least differently from verbal assessment. While verbal assessment may provide a more nuanced picture regarding declarative and procedural knowledge, structural assessment may add an in-depth understanding of the concepts that are regarded important in a domain. In the Discussion we propose four guidelines to effectively use structural assessment in serious games: (1) Determine the appropriateness of the domain for structural assessment, (2) select an appropriate referent for the target group(s), (3) select the number of concepts needed for structural assessment, and (4) consider the analysis of the graphical knowledge representations to obtain in-depth information about the quality of the knowledge structures.

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Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Structural Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Structural Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Measuring learning in serious games: a case study with structural assessment

Wouters

Spek

Oostendorp

2011

Education Tech Research Dev

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“…[13, p. 2] They have been used to help students learn, to gain a static picture of what they know, and to measure changes in student understanding. [5,12,18] There have been several suggestions for how to evaluate concept maps. Some techniques rely on a quantitative analysis where the number of nodes, edges, etc.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student understanding of object-oriented programming as expressed in concept maps

et al. 2008

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Sanders, K., Boustedt, J., Eckerdal, A., McCartney, R., Mostr?m, J., Thomas, L., and Zander, C. 2008. Student understanding of object-oriented programming as expressed in concept maps. In Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (Portland, OR, USA, March 12 - 15, 2008). SIGCSE '08. ACM, New York, NY, 332-336.In this paper, we present the results of an experiment in which we sought to elicit students' understanding of object-oriented (OO) concepts using concept maps. Our analysis confirmed earlier research indicating that students do not have a firm grasp on the distinction between 'class' and 'instance.' Unlike earlier research, we found that our students generally connect classes with both data and behavior. Students rarely included any mention of the hardware/software context of programs, their users, or their real-world domains. Students do mention inheritance, but not encapsulation or abstraction. And the picture they draw of OO is a static one: we found nothing that could be construed as referring to interaction among objects in a program. We then discuss the implications for teaching introductory OO programming.Non peer reviewe

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“…It is clear that EXP2 predicted three of the performance measures DK, PK, and CK significantly while the others predicted no, one or two measures. In the literature, there is research that utilized a single expert network (Nash, Bravaco, & Simonson, 2006) or an averaged expert network (Trumpower & Goldsmith, 2004) as a referent structure. However, Acton et al (1994) argue that "the validity of a referent structure is related to its ability to predict exam performance in computer programming courses" (p. 304) and thus it is legitimate to select an expert referent based on its predictive ability on programming performance.…”

Section: Referent Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Promoting conceptual change of learning sorting algorithm through the diagnosis of mental models: The effects of gender and learning styles

Lau

Yuen

2010

Computers & Education

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It has been advocated that pedagogical content knowledge as well as subject matter knowledge are important in improving classroom instructions. To develop pedagogical content knowledge, it is argued that understanding of students' mental representations of concepts is deemed necessary. Yet assessing and comparing mental model of each individual is very tedious and time consuming. This study attempted to use gender and learning style to associate mental models in learning sorting algorithm. The Gregorc Style Delineator (GSD) was used to measure learning styles of participants. Mental models were assessed using the Pathfinder Scaling Algorithm (PSA). Results indicated that females showed greater similarity in mental models than males and concrete learners also exhibited closer resemblance to the expert mental model than abstract learners. These suggest that gender and learning style can be meaningfully used to associate mental models in order to provide a group-based instead of individual-based diagnosis and thus promote conceptual change in learning.

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Assessing knowledge change in computer science

Cited by 6 publications

References 17 publications

Measuring learning in serious games: a case study with structural assessment

Measuring learning in serious games: a case study with structural assessment

Student understanding of object-oriented programming as expressed in concept maps

Promoting conceptual change of learning sorting algorithm through the diagnosis of mental models: The effects of gender and learning styles

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