Assessment - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 193

Activity 84: Construction of an Evaluation Rubric for Software Projects
• Stage A: Setting the teaching scene
The instructor of the MTCS course selects a project theme and scope to
be developed by high school pupils and describes it to the students of the
MTCS course. One such setting is presented in Activity 83. Here are two
additional examples of such descriptions:
Example 1: 11th grade pupils develop a software project in the object-ori-
ented development paradigm approach during the entire school year. They
already learned the basic CS concepts in the 10th grade. If the project re-
quires additional knowledge, the pupils learn this knowledge by themselves
with their teacher' aid. Each week they should dedicate 6 hours to the project
development.
Example 2: 10th grade pupils develop a software project in pairs for 2
month in the Alice development environment (see Chap. 8). They learn the
CS material in parallel to the project development. Each week they should
allocate 4 hours to the project development.
After such a description is presented to the students, the instructor asks the
MTCS course students what aspects of the project, in their opinion, should be
evaluated. Their suggestions are listed on the board.
• Stage B: Construction of an evaluation rubric, group work
The students are asked to work in groups and to construct an evaluation
rubric for the project described in Stage A. They are also asked to docu-
ment their pedagogical considerations for each decision they took in that
construction process.
After the students have developed the evaluation rubrics, each group presents
its rubric alongside its pedagogical considerations.
• Stage C: Conclusion
In this conclusion, the instructor should highlight the following messages
related to evaluation processes in general and emphasize their application
and relevance for the evaluation of software projects:
• The purpose of evaluation is to enhance learners' learning processes and
understanding.
• Learners should get the message that evaluation is a means rather than a
target by itself.
• An evaluation policy should match the educational messages that a teacher
delivers to his or her pupils.
• The pupils should be familiar with their evaluation process from the very
beginning of the evaluation process.
• Evaluation policies should address both the learning process and its final
product.