Computer science concept inventories: past and future

Taylor, Cynthia; Zingaro, Daniel; Porter, Leo; Webb, Kevin C.; Lee, Cynthia Bailey; Clancy, Michael

doi:10.1080/08993408.2014.970779

Cited by 105 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…To this point, most assessment research in CS has focused on programming concepts [29,67,87,96] and, for understandable reasons, mainly at tertiary level. Efforts have ranged from concept inventories [86] to the use of taxonomies [82,84,90] and specialized exams. A cognitive assessment method for measuring problem solving and program development skills has been proposed by Deek et al [30].…”

Section: Approaches To Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concepts in K-9 Computer Science Education

Barendsen

Mannila

Demo

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the 2015 ITiCSE on Working Group Reports

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This exploratory study focuses on concepts and their assessment in K-9 computer science (CS) education. We analyzed concepts in local curriculum documents and guidelines, as well as interviewed K-9 teachers in two countries about their teaching and assessment practices. Moreover, we investigated the 'task based assessment' approach of the international Bebras contest by classifying the conceptual content and question structure of Bebras tasks spanning five years. Our results show a variety in breadth and focus in curriculum documents, with the notion of algorithm as a significant common concept. Teachers' practice appears to vary, depending on their respective backgrounds. Informal assessment practices are predominant, especially in the case of younger students. In the Bebras tasks, algorithms and data representation were found to be the main concept categories. The question structure follows specific patterns, but the relative frequencies of the patterns employed in the tasks vary over the years. Our analysis methods appear to be interesting in themselves, and the results of our study give rise to suggestions for follow-up research.

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Section: Approaches To Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concepts in K-9 Computer Science Education

Barendsen

Mannila

Demo

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the 2015 ITiCSE on Working Group Reports

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“…CIs for Computer Science topics are only beginning to be created [18]. However, there is a large amount of ongoing work regarding the development of reliable and valid CIs for CS topics [20].…”

Section: Sigcse'17mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other efforts were directed towards higher level courses like the digital logic CI [8], the operating systems CI [21], the algorithms and data structures CI [4], and the computer architecture CI [16]. The interested reader can consult [18] for more information about CIs for CS-related topics.…”

Section: Sigcse'17mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a Concept Inventory for Algorithm Analysis Topics

Farghally

Koh

Ernst

et al. 2017

Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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We present initial results from our work towards developing a concept inventory for algorithm analysis (AACI) at the post-CS2 level. We used a Delphi process to identify a list of algorithm analysis topics that were considered both important and hard by surveying a panel of experienced instructors. Through a similar survey process, we identified a list of student misconceptions related to the identified topics. Based on this, a set of pilot AACI items were developed. We validated the misconceptions list by analyzing student responses to four administrations of the pilot AACI in two different universities during Fall 2015 and Spring 2016. Results revealed that a sufficient number of students held most of the misconceptions identified in the list.

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“…Primary hurdles include assignment of values to variables, following sequential logic, recursion/iteration (see [12]) and concurrency. For further background information, including key concept inventories, see [13], [14] and [15].…”

Section: What Is Programming?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Computer programming in the UK undergraduate mathematics curriculum

Sangwin

O’Toole

2017

International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and

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This paper reports a study which investigated the extent to which undergraduate mathematics students in the United Kingdom are currently taught to programme a computer as a core part of their mathematics degree programme. We undertook an online survey, with significant follow up correspondence, to gather data on current curricula and received replies from 46 (63%) of the departments who teach a BSc mathematics degree. We found that 78% of BSc degree courses in mathematics included computer programming in a compulsory module but 11% of mathematics degree programmes do not teach programming to all their undergraduate mathematics students. In 2016 programming is most commonly taught to undergraduate mathematics students through imperative languages, notably MATLAB, using numerical analysis as the underlying (or parallel) mathematical subject matter. Statistics is a very popular choice in optional courses, using the package R. Computer algebra systems appear to be significantly less popular for compulsory first year courses than a decade ago, and there was no mention of logic programming, functional programming or automatic theorem proving software. The modal form of assessment of computing modules is entirely by coursework (i.e. no examination).

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Computer science concept inventories: past and future

Cited by 105 publications

References 29 publications

Concepts in K-9 Computer Science Education

Concepts in K-9 Computer Science Education

Towards a Concept Inventory for Algorithm Analysis Topics

Computer programming in the UK undergraduate mathematics curriculum

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