Beyond MCQ
Shuchi Grover, Bob Carmichael, Shivram Venkatasubramaniam · Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2 · 2022
There is a growing recognition that quiz-like formative assessments can play a crucial role in providing timely feedback on student learning in K-12 CS classrooms. While programming projects are necessary, scoring them and providing pointed feedback to students to improve learning requires enormous effort. Besides, code-reading and comprehension exercises are just as important as code creation when learning coding. Auto-gradable exit tickets in K-12 CS classrooms have thus far stayed in the realm of multiple-choice questions (MCQ). Our NSF-funded project set out to explore how we can push the boundaries on formative assessments that are engaging and interactive for students and can be used (like MCQ) to get quick feedback on student understanding We drew on CS education research to create a suite of new assessments types designed to support student interactivity on the assessment platform edfinity.com. This poster shares examples of these new problem types including point-and-click/hotspot interaction, match the column, Parson's problems, and problems that allow students to match subgoal labels to sections of code. Given that these are targeted for K-12 classrooms, many problem types such as point-and-click and subgoal labeling are well-suited for images of block-based code snippets. Additionally, with younger learners and neuro/ethnic diversity in mind, these assessments also support rich text, images and videos in problems (including Parson's and match-the-column option blocks) as well as solution explanations of the problem. Research on the use of these assessments is currently underway; early feedback from teachers attending our workshops has been very positive