Formative Assessment
Daily programming assignments gave me a good idea of how well my students understood and could apply each programming concept. However, each year I had a handful of students who managed to turn in quality programs that were not plagiarized, but who still did not fully understand the programming concept. In a few cases, the student revealed that he or she was not comfortable with the course material from the start. When the rest of the class was learning about repetition, the student and I started over with variables.
Do not let this happen to your students! I regret the frustration and discomfort my students felt. Here are some methods that, in addition to programming assignments, will help you gauge your students' grasp of programming assignments.
Do not let this happen to your students! I regret the frustration and discomfort my students felt. Here are some methods that, in addition to programming assignments, will help you gauge your students' grasp of programming assignments.
Daily Exit Ticket
Weekly (or a few times a week) Formative Assessment
You could use the same exit ticket concept during or immediately after a lecture or discussion. This will help you collect information on how well students understood and can apply the topic. Again, use the results to determine whether you need to immediately reteach a portion of the topic or whether the might need to pull a small group for reteach.
- At the end of each class period, use a student response system (eInstruction CPS) or app (Socrative or Kahoot) to ask students one or more questions about the topic you worked on that day. You could ask a multiple choice question and a short answer question. Be sure the questions address the heart of the topic and are not a quick fill-in-the-blank question that could be found by skimming the textbook or notes. Short Answer Question Ideas: PBS TeacherLine Resource
- Save the students' responses, and review/analyze them.
- Based on the students' responses, determine whether you need to reteach the entire topic, address/discuss certain elements of the topic that caused confusion, or pull a small group for reteach. Plan this into your instruction on the next class day.
- On the next class day, implement your reteach plan. If you wait, you may have missed a valuable opportunity to clear up misconceptions!
Weekly (or a few times a week) Formative Assessment
You could use the same exit ticket concept during or immediately after a lecture or discussion. This will help you collect information on how well students understood and can apply the topic. Again, use the results to determine whether you need to immediately reteach a portion of the topic or whether the might need to pull a small group for reteach.
Student-Created Videos
Tools
- Students record themselves explaining a topic, a solution, or how their program works using an online video creation tool.
- Students turn in their videos or a link to their videos on the class online learning management system (Schoology, Edmodo) or through email.
- Teacher reviews each student's video and narration.
Tools
- Club Academia has examples of students explaining a topic to other students
- Educreations website or app for recording videos
- Stoodle website for recording videos
- Jing is a free screencasting tool (requires download and installation), record videos up to 5 minutes in length
- Camtasia is a more robus paid version of Jing
- Screencast-O-Matic is a free online screencasting tool, record videos up to 15 minutes in length
- Screenr is another free online screencasting tool
- Learn more about teacher- and student-created video on the Flipped Classroom page of this website
Classroom Assessment Techniques
- Practice: Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATS) from the Rochester Institute of Technology Teaching & Learning Services
