ABSTRACT

Many factors have been cited for poor performance of students in CS1. To investigate how assessment mechanisms may impact student performance, nine experienced CS1 instructors reviewed final examinations from a variety of North American institutions. The majority of the exams reviewed were composed predominantly of high-value, integrative code-writing questions, and the reviewers regularly underestimated the number of CS1 concepts required to answer these questions. An evaluation of the content and cognitive requirements of individual questions suggests that in order to succeed, students must internalize a large amount of CS1 content. This emphasizes the need for focused assessment techniques to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge.