This paper presents Programming Adaptive Testing (PAT), a Web-based adaptive testing system for assessing students' programming knowledge. PAT was used in two high school programming classes by 73 students. The question bank of PAT is composed of 443 questions. A question is classified in one out of three difficulty levels. In PAT, the levels of…

Active learning is considered by many academics as an important and effective learning strategy. Assessment is integrated in learning as a tool for learning, but traditional assessment methods often encourage surface learning (passive learning) rather than deep learning (active learning). Peer assessment is a method of motivating students,…

Discusses the importance of standards in introductory programming courses that enable novice software developers to write correct programs to specification and time. Considers issues involved with assessing students' programming abilities. Provides an overview of an automated assessment system adopted at the University of Warwick (United Kingdom)…

Discusses multimedia authoring software that uses hypertext and reviews the ways in which use of this technology may support improvements in assessment. Describes research with sixth graders in England that investigated how pupil-produced multimedia documents can reveal aspects of performance that traditional tests may not recognize. (Author/LRW)