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.

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This case study explores an inverted classroom offering of an introductory programming course (CS1). Students prepared for lecture by watching short lecture videos and completing required in-video quiz questions. During lecture, the students worked through exercises with the support of the instructor and teaching assistants. We describe the course implementation and its assessment, including pre-and postcourse surveys. We also discuss lessons learned, modifications that we plan to make for the next offering, and recommendations for others teaching inverted courses.

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We compare a traditional CS1 offering with an inverted offering delivered the following year to a comparable student population. We measure student attitudes, grades, and final course outcomes and find that, while students in the inverted offering do not report increased enjoyment and are no more likely to pass, learning as measured by final exam performance increases significantly. This increase is not simply a function of a more onerous inverted offering, as students report spending similar time per week in the traditional and inverted offerings. Contrary to our hypotheses, however, we find no evidence that the the inverted offering disproportionally helps beginners or those not fully fluent in English.