Reflection for Recovery: Exam Wrappers in an Object-Oriented Software Development Course Help Struggling Students Improve Future Exam Scores

Abstract

Can student reflection play a beneficial role in pursuit of a career in software development? In this paper, we report on a study of the effectiveness of one reflective tool, "exam wrappers," for teaching a software engineering (SE) and computer science (CS) fundamentals course focused on objectoriented design and programming. In general, reflection is an area of growing interest in SE. We see it, for example, in the use of retrospectives in Scrum. Reflection is increasingly being used in the science and engineering college courses, after a long history in liberal arts. We collected exam scores for nearly a thousand (957) students who took the course. This relatively large sample of exam scores allows us to perform statistical analysis to measure effects otherwise challenging to detect. Because exam wrappers are used toward a specific, measurable end, this is one case where statistics can be used to judge the effectiveness of a type of reflection. Having a way to measure the results of this effort contributes to the science of education. We compare student performance on assessments in several ways, focusing our analysis mainly on comparisons between the terms (quarters) where these wrappers were used, and prior years when they were not used. In terms when an exam wrapper was present, our results show a greater relative improvement from the first exam to the final exam for low-scoring students than in terms when the exam wrapper was absent. This result is statistically significant and lends support to the hypothesis that exam wrappers can improve student outcomes. We discuss potential confounding factors and also the implications of this work for SE and CS course development.

Alleviating Students’ Naive Theory on Newton’s Laws of Motion through Problem Optimization and Scaffolding Discussion

“…Students start with physics equations and then develop conceptual stories known as mathematic to meaning mapping strategies [65]. However, their understanding was applied in a recursive plug-and-chug method to Problem 2 [71]. A ball that has twice the mass/weight will take twice as long to reach the ground because its acceleration is half that of a lighter ball.…”

“…The equation used is the equation for the acceleration of gravity or the strength of a gravitational field with the same magnitude. Their understanding was applied in a recursive plug-and-chug method to Problem 2 [71]. Based on the interview, from the interview, there were five students who said "woo, that's the procedure for the discussion, then I don't need help anymore, I can do it."…”

“…However, because there is still friction and Archimedes' force, the time it takes to fall from a smaller object is less than half the time it takes to fall from a larger object. Recursive plug-and-chug applies such student understanding to Problem 2 [71]. Students ignore the context; if they are in a gravitational field, then everything must obey the acceleration of gravity around 9.8 m/s 2 .…”

Examining the Efficacy of Exam Wrappers in a Computer Science Course

“…Several studies did not find any significant impact on average exam scores when using exam wrappers [7,8,9,10,11,14]. We observe that every study that examined the grades of the lowest performing students reported meaningful improvements in performance on later exams for students who completed exam wrappers [3,14,17]. Another observation is that behavioral results always include at least one positive impact and no negative impacts; Batson [14] concludes that there is no downside to introducing exam wrappers since they may help some students to reach a better understanding and a better grade in a course.…”

“…Yoder and Chenoweth [17] use exam wrappers in an object-oriented software development course. They compared performance over a number of terms with a total of 957 students (491 without an exam wrapper); 72 of the students completed both exam wrappers and gave consent to participate in the study.…”