Work In Progress: A Comparison of Assessment Techniques

First year cadets at the United States Military Academy are required to complete an introduction to computers and technology course. In the past, we assessed the student mastery of the basic programming concepts of sequence, selection, and iteration through large out-of-class projects. Recently, we redesigned the course assessment technique to replace the out-of-class projects with three in-class graded labs involving scaled down problems. Comparison of the results of term end exams and end-of-course surveys from cadets and faculty from both semesters indicate that the in-class graded labs are a better assessment technique. This paper discusses the implementation and results of the in class graded labs