MCS1: A MATLAB Programming Concept Inventory for Assessing First-year Engineering Courses

Abstract

Ada recently graduated from The Ohio State University with a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering. Her undergraduate research was in coding education for first-year students. Ada will be pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science in the fall.

Uses, Revisions, and the Future of Validated Assessments in Computing Education: A Case Study of the FCS1 and SCS1

“…Despite the goal of creating an assessment that could be used by a multitude of students learning different languages, many research teams have chosen to replicate the SCS1 assessment into specific programming languages [2,3,17,37,58]. In one instance, the motivation for moving away from the pseudocode-based assessment was that the pseudocode was non-intuitive and concerns were raised about burdening students with interpreting a pseudolanguage, which was discussed as a concern with the results of the FCS1 validation studies [37].…”

“…Duvall et al cited that the pseudocode language was too similar to Python and their students had difficulty understanding the questions. In another instance, the SCS1 assessment was translated into MATLAB to provide a MATLAB-specific concept inventory (MCS1; MATLAB Computer Science 1 Assessment) [2,3]. The MCS1 was piloted during think-aloud interviews with six first-year engineering students.…”

Using Programming Concept Inventory Assessments: Findings in a First-year Engineering Course

“…In the analysis of the assessment one of the questions, Question 4 of SCS1, included a typo which resulted in multiple correct answers to the question. When this question was removed the mean score for the SCS1 assessment shifted less than 1% [12], therefore it is not expected to impact the results presented here since they are presented as the overall score rather than by question or subset of questions. The full assessment without question 4 removed is included in the remainder of these results but we call to attention this potential limitation in interpreting the full results.…”

“…In 2020, SCS1 [11], was replicated to produce a MATLAB-specific concept inventory, MCS1 [12]. Both assessments are multiple-choice and take approximately one hour to complete.…”

“…Both assessments are multiple-choice and take approximately one hour to complete. These concept inventories assess student understanding in arrays, basics, for loops, function parameters and return values, if statements, logical operators, recursion, and while loops [11,12]. Since these topics align with the first-year engineering curriculum at The Ohio State University, these concept inventories were used to evaluate the impacts of the recent curriculum changes.…”