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Title: MRS: Automated Assessment of Interactive Classroom Exercises
Classroom formative assessment augmented with timely and frequent feedback has become one of the most prominent teaching practices in education research. On the context of Computer Science (CS) courses that expose students to the functionality and dynamic aspects of various algorithms, traditionally, students are evaluated by exploring in-class paper-based exercises. In these exercises, they simulate the steps of an algorithm by drawing several instances of a diagram. This traditional approach is time consuming, is inherently difficult for students to express the dynamics of an algorithm, does not allow timely feedback, and restricts the number of exercises that students can practice and receive feedback on. Mobile Response System (MRS) is a software environment that facilitates in-class exercises and their real-time assessment using mobile devices and therefore focuses on addressing many of the above-mentioned problems. In this paper, we present results of eight semester-long studies using MRS in two of the required CS courses at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU). Our experimental evaluation shows the educational benefits of the proposed approach in terms of enhanced student retention of covered concepts, reduced failing rate, and increased student engagement and satisfaction.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1332531
NSF-PAR ID:
10053581
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
Page Range / eLocation ID:
290 to 295
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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