Exam as an assessment instrument in computer programming courses: student perceptions

Assessment can take many forms, and it can be argued that the greater the diversity in the methods of assessment, the fairer, assessment is to students (Race 2007). The most effective form of assessment is one that appropriately examines the learning outcomes of the module. Assessment methods are also known to play an important role in how students learn (Brown 2004). The traditional assessment approach, in which one single written examination counts towards a student's total score, no longer meets new demands of programming language education (Wang, Li et al. 2012). Students tend to gain higher marks from coursework assignments than they do from examinations (Gibbs and Simpson, 2004). Students consider coursework to be fairer than exams, to measure a greater range of abilities than exams and to allow students to organize their own work patterns to a greater extent (Kniveton, 1996, cited in Gibbs and Simpson, 2004). Do students really hate exams? Are exams ineffective as an assessment approach in computer programming courses? A university wide research survey regarding assessment approaches in computer programming was conducted among students of undergraduate computing courses (including all three levels). 167 students participated in the survey. The author discusses some interesting results obtained from the survey. More than 50% of the students surveyed indicated that they would like examination to be a part of the assessment approach. The author explores possible reasons for this choice by students and compares these results with that of research conducted in other subject areas

Pile-up solutions for some systems of conservation laws modelling dislocation interaction in crystals

Some continuum models for dislocation interactions in a simple crystal geometry are studied. The simplest models are mixed systems of conservation laws which are shown to exhibit singularities and instabilities. These are then regularized, leading to parabolic free-boundary problems. In both cases, solutions describing the formation of structures such as dislocation pile-ups are discussed

The role of ontologies in creating and maintaining corporate knowledge: a case study from the aero industry

The Designers’ Workbench is a system, developed to support designers in large organizations, such as Rolls-Royce, by making sure that the design is consistent with the specification for the particular design as well as with the company’s design rule book(s). The evolving design is described against a jet engine ontology. Currently, to capture the constraint information, a domain expert (design engineer) has to work with a knowledge engineer to identify the constraints, and it is then the task of the knowledge engineer to encode these into the Workbench’s knowledge base (KB). This is an error prone and time consuming task. It is highly desirable to relieve the knowledge engineer of this task, and so we have developed a tool, ConEditor+ that enables domain experts themselves to capture and maintain these constraints. The tool allows the user to combine selected entities from the domain ontology with keywords and operators of a constraint language to form a constraint expression. Further, we hypothesize that to apply constraints appropriately, it is necessary to understand the context in which each constraint is applicable. We refer to this as “application conditions”. We show that an explicit representation of application conditions, in a machine interpretable format, along with the constraints and the domain ontology can be used to support the verification and maintenance of constraints

Constraint capture and maintenance in engineering design

The Designers' Workbench is a system, developed by the Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) consortium to support designers in large organizations, such as Rolls-Royce, to ensure that the design is consistent with the specification for the particular design as well as with the company's design rule book(s). In the principal application discussed here, the evolving design is described against a jet engine ontology. Design rules are expressed as constraints over the domain ontology. Currently, to capture the constraint information, a domain expert (design engineer) has to work with a knowledge engineer to identify the constraints, and it is then the task of the knowledge engineer to encode these into the Workbench's knowledge base (KB). This is an error prone and time consuming task. It is highly desirable to relieve the knowledge engineer of this task, and so we have developed a system, ConEditor+ that enables domain experts themselves to capture and maintain these constraints. Further we hypothesize that in order to appropriately apply, maintain and reuse constraints, it is necessary to understand the underlying assumptions and context in which each constraint is applicable. We refer to them as “application conditions” and these form a part of the rationale associated with the constraint. We propose a methodology to capture the application conditions associated with a constraint and demonstrate that an explicit representation (machine interpretable format) of application conditions (rationales) together with the corresponding constraints and the domain ontology can be used by a machine to support maintenance of constraints. Support for the maintenance of constraints includes detecting inconsistencies, subsumption, redundancy, fusion between constraints and suggesting appropriate refinements. The proposed methodology provides immediate benefits to the designers and hence should encourage them to input the application conditions (rationales)

ConEditor+: Capture and Maintenance of Constraints in Engineering Design

The Designers' Workbench is a system, developed to support designers in large organizations, such as Rolls-Royce, by making sure that the design is consistent with the specification for the particular design as well as with the company’s design rule book(s). Currently, to capture the constraint information, a domain expert (design engineer) has to work with a knowledge engineer to identify the constraints, and it is then the task of the knowledge engineer to encode these into the Workbench's knowledge base (KB). This is an error prone and time consuming task. It is highly desirable to relieve the knowledge engineer of this task, and so we have developed a tool, ConEditor+ that enables domain experts themselves to capture and maintain these constraints. The tool allows the user to combine selected entities from the domain ontology with keywords and operators of a constraint language to form a constraint expression. Further, we hypothesize that to apply constraints appropriately, it is necessary to understand the context in which each constraint is applicable. We refer to this as "application conditions". We show that an explicit representation of application conditions, in a machine interpretable format, along with the constraints and the domain ontology can be used to support the verification and maintenance of constraints

Capture and Maintenance of Constraints in Engineering Design

The thesis investigates two domains, initially the kite domain and then part of a more demanding Rolls-Royce domain (jet engine design). Four main types of refinement rules that use the associated application conditions and domain ontology to support the maintenance of constraints are proposed. The refinement rules have been implemented in ConEditor and the extended system is known as ConEditor+. With the help of ConEditor+, the thesis demonstrates that an explicit representation of application conditions together with the corresponding constraints and the domain ontology can be used to detect inconsistencies, redundancy, subsumption and fusion, reduce the number of spurious inconsistencies and prevent the identification of inappropriate refinements of redundancy, subsumption and fusion between pairs of constraints.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Capture and Maintenance of Constraints in Engineering Design

The thesis investigates two domains, initially the kite domain and then part of a more demanding Rolls-Royce domain (jet engine design). Four main types of refinement rules that use the associated application conditions and domain ontology to support the maintenance of constraints are proposed. The refinement rules have been implemented in ConEditor and the extended system is known as ConEditor+. With the help of ConEditor+, the thesis demonstrates that an explicit representation of application conditions together with the corresponding constraints and the domain ontology can be used to detect inconsistencies, redundancy, subsumption and fusion, reduce the number of spurious inconsistencies and prevent the identification of inappropriate refinements of redundancy, subsumption and fusion between pairs of constraints

Assessment and Measurement in Higher Education with multiple criteria, scales, and raters: A theoretical approach and a practical example

Assessment and measurement (A&amp;M) in higher education can be holistic, relying on the teacher’s mental assessment model (covert), or analytic in the sense of computing the sum or average of scores from student’s responses on test items or teacher’s quality criteria applied to student’s course work (overt). Usually, scores are numbers lying on a reduced sort of scale called n-point scale. Although researchers have come up with statistical models to enable A&amp;M with multiple criteria, scales, or raters, the acceptance of those advanced models has remained minimal: they may be too complex for educational practice as they are primarily aimed at educational research projects with enough resources (time, money, people) in appropriate organizational settings.Since 2003 we have been developing, testing, and applying more appropriate approaches and frameworks for A&amp;M that take the challenging work practices of teachers in higher education into account. They enable A&amp;M with multiple quality criteria on scales of various types, and they allow several assessors to be responsible for distinct quality aspects. The approaches and frameworks were designed with flexibility and adaptability in mind. Often, it is no longer enough to test students for their factual knowledge or general problem-solving ability. Instead, the focus may be on skills that will be assessed through observation of students’ behaviour and/or examination of the results of assignments in the form of long-term projects with goals that may be achieved in different but equally valid ways.Our most recent A&amp;M framework called provides scoring models for instructional types not yet covered in a satisfying way by traditional A&amp;M, such as group work. We have successfully used to offer customizable solutions for Group-Peer-Assessment (GPA), deriving individual student scores from a group score and mutual peer ratings, given just two parameters: the spread of student scores around the group score and the impact of peer ratings on student scores. GPA comes with a built-in test called the Split-Join-Invariance (SJI) to check if the final results (marks or grades) are correctly calculated. GPA imposes no artificial restrictions on group size, type or number of quality criteria, or other context-specific aspects of GPA.<br/

The Use of Bounded Grading Scales in Higher Education

Using grading scales has a long tradition in higher education and on the job training. It is used in a variety of ways to assess what students / trainees have learned and how well they can apply their newly acquired knowledge to accomplish certain tasks or solve given problems. The assessment result may take the form of a written report by the assessor indicating how many tasks / problems the assessees has successfully accomplished and why they failed on the other ones. Students or trainees can use that information to prepare for a rehearsal of the same test or assignment, or for the next one. In the case of a final examination, assessors may use it to justify and report their decisions regarding the status of the assessees at the institution or workplace.Using assessment protocols, including ordered grades on a bounded grading scale, can be both challenging and inefficient to work with, when it comes to aggregating the grades of a portfolio or sequence of assessments. Also, assessors find it often difficult to decide which of two successive grades better represents a given assessment result, when the grading scale is rather coarse, e.g., A up to G, or 1 to 10. This may explain the invention of alphanumeric grading scales with special codes like B− and C+ to solve the grading conflict.It is clear that such workarounds can’t go on forever. Here, the generalized concept of a bound-ed grading scale between lower bound LB and upper bound UB is proposed as a solution. In other words: a grading scale no longer consists of distinct alphanumeric codes; instead, a grade may be any point on a line segment from LB to UB. By associating numbers with LB and UB, the grading scale can be simply denoted by [LB,UB]: the ordered range of real numbers between LB and UB.In this paper, we will show how to calculate with grades on a bounded scale [LB,UB] such that the sum of two grades is again a grade, and any grade may be multiplied by a positive decimal number, called its weight, to obtain a weighted grade. We will then show how sums of weighted grades play the same role on bounded scales as the more familiar concept of the weighted average of a list of numbers. Furthermore, we will introduce the concept of a neutral score, which marks the threshold between “negative” and “positive” grades. By default, the neutral score equals the midpoint between LB and UB, but we will show that any grade may play this role, granted a simple adaptation of the weighted sum of grades.Bounded grading scales together with the above-mentioned operations may be used to solve several problems that emerge quite commonly in educational assessment.We will demonstrate this with three scenarios:(1) A complex assignment shall be assessed using many criteria all using the same bounded scale. Then the overall assessment may be reported as the sum of weighted grades over all criteria.(2) Same as before, but now each criterion is associated with its own bounded scale. Then, the solution will be to map the grades to the percentage scale and to calculate a weighted sum of the percentage grades.(3) In Group-Peer Assessment, the assessor calculates the grade for a group product (using 1 or 2), as well as the individual student contributions on the signed percentage scale based on mutual peer ratings. Then, a rather simple scoring rule suffices to map student contributions to student grades on a constrained percentage scale such that the mean student grade equals the group grade

An innovative web-based tool to solve group marking issues

Group/Team work is an important element in most (if not all) courses in higher level education. Assessment of group work has always been challenging with potential problems. Problems include inconsistent marking processes and potentially unfair scoring/grading methods. Our study reviewed group marking processes across several courses including software engineering, computing, business computing, web technology and security within one university. The key challenge faced by all is: “How can the marks from a lecturer and students within a group be combined in a fair way to produce a single score for each student?”. We discuss preliminary results of evaluating a tool that has been developed to tackle the above challenge