Page 99 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Chapter 5
Assessment of Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computing Science Education
Using the findings from the first two studies, we developed a curriculum intervention including a practical assignment and an accompanying assessment instrument consisting of grading rubrics based on the SOLO taxonomy. In this chapter we focus on the assessment instrument. We describe its development and report on a pilot study carried out in the secondary computing science course implementing the curriculum intervention. The instrument proved to be reliable and effective in tracing high and low levels of the students’ achievements in modeling and simulation projects and exposed the expected differences in performance levels of various groups of students, which renders it useful for both formative and summative assessment. Furthermore, our application of the instrument has provided new insights into the needs of specific groups of students to receive instruction prior to and during the work on the assignments.
This chapter is based on the paper Grgurina, N., Barendsen, E., Suhre, C., Zwaneveld, B., & van Veen, K. (2018). Assessment of modeling and simulation in secondary computing science education. In Proceedings of the 13th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education (pp. 1-10) (Grgurina, Barendsen, Suhre, Zwaneveld, et al., 2018).