Interactive program demonstration as a form of student program assessment

  • Authors:

  • Fritz Ruehr;Genevieve Orr

  • Affiliations:

  • Willamette University, Salem, OR;Willamette University, Salem, OR

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

We describe and advocate an approach to student program grading based on interactive program demonstration. Although one-on-one interaction is a hallmark of good teaching in many disciplines, the pressure of class loads and the availability of sophisticated automatic tools have steered some instructors away from close interaction with students in computer science. We feel that our approach has significant advantages over either more traditional ones (submission of work on paper for "off-line" grading) or newer ones based on automated tools. In particular, we feel that interactive demonstration offers a rich and compelling experience for instructors and students alike. We do not believe our approach is especially novel, but wish to recommend it to those who may never have considered it, and to promote it within a continuing dialogue about assessment techniques.Interactive demonstration has some disadvantages, of course, not the least of which is the difficulty of implementing it in settings with larger class sizes. Even in larger schools, however, the approach may be suitable for selected assignments, and most other drawbacks can be tempered by appropriate modifications to the basic framework.We begin with some general discussion of the goals and pitfalls of assessing student programs and mention some possible alternative approaches. We then describe the interactive demonstration style of grading as we have developed it. Next we consider the advantages and disadvantages of our approach and discuss ways to ameliorate the latter. Finally, we use our stated criteria to compare our approach with others and draw some summary conclusions.