A General Concept Inventory for Introductory Computer Science - A Work in Progress
Brennan Denzel, Maíra Marques Samary · 2022
In the last couple years, the interest in computer science programs has significantly increased both within the academic realm and the general population. Currently, students entering computer science programs possess very diverse computing experience; some have never coded before, some have a little code experience, and others have years worth of experience. Because of this, the fixed-structured program style, where students follow a predetermined, specific course path does not work very well; students are often left feeling frustrated and discouraged because the courses they have to do are either too easy or too hard. This deters many students from pursuing careers or majors in computer science. To solve this issue, a standardized assessment that will measure students' knowledge independently of any previously learned programming languages is necessary. This paper presents the idea and a partial validation of a General Computer Science Concept Inventory (GCSCI). The goal is to have a language independent assessment that can measure students' knowledge of the concepts contained within the introductory CS courses (CS0, CS1, CS2). Here we present the topics covered in the first part of the GCSCI and its validity assessment. Students doing an Intro to CS course were invited to participate in the validation of the first part of the GCSCI. Of the 25 questions generated, which have a good coverage of the concepts being evaluated, 14 were validated.