Making up a CS lab exam
CS200 Lab Exam
Context
CS200 has a lab component, weekly assignments are done using in a MAC lab at the University
of Waterloo. Students have scheduled lab time were they work on their assignments and have
a tutor and a teacher assistant ready to help them. The goal is for them to
develop methods that make them proficiency in solving new tasks using a computer.
A critical motivation to attend the lab and do properly their assignments is the
lab exam that students know is coming upon them at the end of the term.
Given two hours and help, they are faced with an application that is new to them
and have to use effectively to solve specific tasks.
As a lecturer, the challenge is to design a lab exam that is fair, fun, but yet
challenging. Students are under incredible stress in such situation, many things
can go wrong. Making such exam requires a lot of testing to make sure it will go
on smoothly.
Goals
- Show the students how much they had learned.
- Make the exam stimulating, so that students kept interests while
not getting discouraged and losing confidence.
- Determine the students who gain the mastery that we expected from
the ones that did not.
Amaya
I decided long before the end of term that using
Amaya as the new application had many advantages and one drawback.
Amaya is web editor with browser features that combines editing
the HTML source code or direct editing in the browser. For their course
projects, the students had developed HTML pages including CSS, thus Amaya
could be used as a new environment doing similar tasks they had done.
In addition, Amaya permits editing SVG, geometric graphics, that was also
studied using Illustrator during the term.
Amaya interface paradigm was new to the students, the development of
a page using multiple views and synchronizing, was a paradigm they were unfamiliar
with.
Exam
The exam had two parts
- HTML - CSS: starting from debugging (to expose them to that feature)
to page creation with some CSS, a picture and links.
- SVG - Geometric Graphics: starting from adding a simple shape
to a given file, to combining many files to create a final composition.
There are the documents of the lab exam
Results Part II
Because I was pleased by the amount the students
achieved during the lab exam, I thought it was interesting to integrate
all their work in a single document: it shows how they progressed
through the Geometric Graphics part of their exam.
It is neat experiment data in terms of composition too.
Student's work on Geometric Graphics
Grades Summary
Part II
Overall
Email : efourque(at)cgl(dot)uwaterloo(dot)ca
Office : CGL lab DC2303
Tel : x34548