A Cost–benefit Analysis of Continuous Assessment

Amalia Duch, Joaquim Gabarro, Jordi Petit, Maria J. Blesa, Maria Serna

2015

Abstract

The first course on programming is fundamental in the Facultat d’Informàtica de Barcelona. After a major redesign of the Programming-1 course in 2006 to give it a more practical flavor, an increasing number of measures have been undertaken over the years to try to increase its pass rate while maintaining a fixed quality level. These measures, that can be roughly summarized as an important increase in assessment, imply an increase in the workload of both students and instructors that does not always correspond to the increase of pass rate they provide. In this paper, and within the context of this course, we analyze quantitatively the amount of work required from faculty to implement the series of measures and we conclude that, within this course, continuous assessment is expensive and has reached its limit.

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  17. 15 week
  18. t5 Lists of problems to hand-in (2011-2012): A list of problems per exam to be delivered by the students before the exam was introduced. The problems of the exams were chosen from the problems of the list. The preparation of each laboratory problem decreased to 1.5 hours. Hence Et4 = 4 2 1:5 + 3 2 = 18. Finally, the preparation of the lists increase Ct by 10 hours, so N that Ct4 = k + 10 + 0:5 1t04 .
  19. t6 Re-evaluation (2012-2013): This measure added 3 hours to Et , 20 hours to Tt , 60 hours to Lt , 15 hours to Gt and 3 hours to Vt .
  20. t7 Quizzes not from the lists (2013-2014): This measure involved the creation of new problems for the mid-term practical exams, instead of taking them from the lists. This increased the time for preparing each problem from 1.5 to 3 hours. Thus Et5 = 4 2 3 + 3 2 = 30.
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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Duch A., Gabarro J., Petit J., Blesa M. and Serna M. (2015). A Cost–benefit Analysis of Continuous Assessment . In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-108-3, pages 57-66. DOI: 10.5220/0005432300570066


in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu15,
author={Amalia Duch and Joaquim Gabarro and Jordi Petit and Maria J. Blesa and Maria Serna},
title={A Cost–benefit Analysis of Continuous Assessment},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,},
year={2015},
pages={57-66},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005432300570066},
isbn={978-989-758-108-3},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,
TI - A Cost–benefit Analysis of Continuous Assessment
SN - 978-989-758-108-3
AU - Duch A.
AU - Gabarro J.
AU - Petit J.
AU - Blesa M.
AU - Serna M.
PY - 2015
SP - 57
EP - 66
DO - 10.5220/0005432300570066