Reviewing CS1 exam question content

Abstract

Many factors have been cited for poor performance of students in CS1. To investigate how assessment mechanisms may impact student performance, nine experienced CS1 instructors reviewed final examinations from a variety of North American institutions. The majority of the exams reviewed were composed predominantly of high-value, integrative codewriting questions, and the reviewers regularly underestimated the number of CS1 concepts required to answer these questions. An evaluation of the content and cognitive requirements of individual questions suggests that in order to succeed, students must internalize a large amount of CS1 content. This emphasizes the need for focused assessment techniques to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge.

Stepping up to integrative questions on CS1 exams

“…Using published lists of CS concepts [9,4], Petersen et al [7] investigated the number of concepts embodied in typical CS1 final exam questions. In a sample of fifteen CS1 final exams, the authors found that 59% of exam marks were devoted to code-writing questions.…”

“…Writing code is the major determinant of whether a student passes CS1, and the widespread use of integrative codewriting questions [7,11] suggests that CS1 instructors believe they are important assessments of student understanding. We are therefore interested in measuring the extent to which concept questions measure what is measured by writing questions.…”

“…Due to the high proportion of such questions, our final exams may not afford students a reasonable opportunity to demonstrate what they know. Code-writing questions intended to target specific concepts may involve many more concepts than expected, and fragile understanding of any of these concepts leads to poor performance overall [7]. Here, we contend that codewriting questions are difficult for novices because they require the students not only to use many concepts, but also to know which of those concepts to use in the first place.…”

Desenvolvimento e avaliação de modificação do jogo minecraft para estimular o pensamento computacional em estudantes do ensino médio

“…Segundo Santana (2015), após uma análise de várias definições, o Pensamento Computacional pode ser tratado como "o desenvolvimento de habilidades que favorecem a resolução de problemas, em que através da organização do modo de pensar, é possível expandir a capacidade mental, permitindo resolver os mais diversos níveis de desafio". Porém, programar não é uma tarefa fácil (LAHTINEN; ALA-MUTKA; JÄRVINEN, 2005) e a disciplina introdutória de algoritmos possui altas taxas de reprovação e abandono (PETERSEN; CRAIG; ZINGARO, 2011). Por isso iniciativas como o code.org exploram o ensino com crianças e adolescentes e estimulam as habilidades necessárias para auxiliar iniciantes em programação introdutória.…”

Facilitating code-writing in PI classes

“…However, PI focuses on in-class discussions of multiple-choice questions, and such a focus suggests a mismatch between PI and the skill-based practice required of CS1 students. Many of the skills typically expected of CS1 students relate to code-investigation and code-writing [5], and code-writing is disproportionately used to gauge student skill on final exams [12].…”