Troubleshooting assessment: an authentic problem solving activity for it education
David Christopher Webb · Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences · 2010
To evaluate the effectiveness of an instructional unit for game design and computer programming, we designed an authentic assessment with five troubleshooting scenarios. This assessment was completed by 24 middle grades students (age 12 – 14 years) after 10 hours of instruction using a visual programming environment. Students successfully completed most of the tasks in 45 minutes. Results from the Troubleshooting Assessment demonstrated that students developed sufficient fluency with programming to be able to apply their knowledge to new problems. These results suggest that troubleshooting scenarios can be used to assess student fluency in computer programming and computer-based problem solving.