Page 92 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

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Chapter 4
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4.3.4
client. Teacher 3 teaches 60-minutes lessons and would start each lesson with a short central instruction and let the students work for themselves the rest of the time. He would use Trello boards for planning and, like teacher 9, employ SCRUM to organize the work. Teacher 10 would send his students to a teacher of a different subject who would then pose as a client, while he himself would be a process supervisor. Teacher 9 would pose as a client himself.
Difficulties and problems: technical problems, problems related to teaching materials and other problems. Teacher 9 warns that no matter how simple the software used is, there is always a possibility of getting an error message, not understanding it and then getting stuck.
Knowledge about Assessment (M4)
When asked about assessment, all teachers agree that the large practical assignment the students worked on to learn modeling could serve for the assessment purpose as well. Teacher 9 could possibly give his students a written exam instead. Teacher 8 would use a small written exam to ascertain the students learned enough about modeling before they are allowed to start working on a large project. When talking about assessment, the teachers report on:
• Assessment form: written exam — formative and summative, project to be done individually or in groups.
• Problems to work on: given by the teacher or provided by the students themselves, open or closed, opportunity for differentiation.
• Organizational issues: SCRUM and rapid development.
• Assessing the work: quality of the end product and project documentation, aspects of modeling cycle, teacher’s impression about the students’ activities in the lessons during work on the project. When assessing the results of the final project, most teachers want to look into the quality of the model — and some of them the code too — as described by the students in the project documentation they are required to turn in. The teachers mention various aspects of the modeling process as relevant for the assessment. However, no clear quality criteria are elaborated and teacher 1 would simply estimate the quality of the project. Teacher 8 adds that technical aspects are easy to assess, but it is difficult to see if the students realize the full