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To address the challenges of running exams in large enrollment CS courses, we set up and operated an in-person testing center at a minority serving institution. We have run the testing center for two quarters, proctoring over 6,000 exams for eight CS courses with approximately 1,800 students. In this experience report, we discuss the motivation for the testing center, its set-up and operation, and the lessons that we have learned from our first two quarters of operation. In addition, we present student and instructor feedback regarding use of the testing center, future steps, and improvements. By sharing, we hope that other schools can learn from our experience and improve upon our methods to help establish best practices for testing center configuration and operation. 

We compare the exam security of three proctoring regimens of Bring-Your-Own-Device, synchronous, computer-based exams in a computer science class: online un-proctored, online proctored via Zoom, and in-person proctored. We performed two randomized crossover experiments to compare these proctoring regimens. The first study measured the score advantage students receive while taking un-proctored online exams over Zoom-proctored online exams. The second study measured the score advantage of students taking Zoom-proctored online exams over in-person proctored exams. In both studies, students took six 50-minute exams using their own devices, which included two coding questions and 8–10 non-coding questions. We find that students score 2.3% higher on non-coding questions when taking exams in the un-proctored format compared to Zoom proctoring. No statistically significant advantage was found for the coding questions. While most of the non-coding questions had randomization such that students got different versions, for the few questions where all students received the same exact version, the score advantage escalated to 5.2%. From the second study, we find no statistically significant difference between students’ performance on Zoom-proctored vs. in-person proctored exams. With this, we recommend educators incorporate some form of proctoring along with question randomization to mitigate cheating concerns in BYOD exams. 

Background: Prior work has primarily been concerned with identifying: (1) how Open Education Resources (OERs) can be used to increase the availability of educational materials, (2) what mo- tivations are behind their adoption and usage in classrooms, and (3) what barriers impede said adoption. However, there is relatively little work investigating the motives and barriers to contribution in OER. Objectives: Our goal is to understand what motivates and dissuades instructors to contribute to and adopt OERs. Additionally, we wish to know what would increase the likelihood of instructors contributing their work to OER repositories. Method: We conduct a 10 question survey with computing instructors on OER, with a heavy emphasis on what would lead to OER contributions. Using thematic analysis, we mine the broad themes from our respondents and group them into broader topical areas. Findings: Novel contributions include discussions of what faculty are not willing to share as readily — in particular, exam questions are of concern due to possible student cheating — as well as discussions of different views on monetary and non-monetary (e.g., promotion and tenure value) incentives for contributing to OER efforts. With respect to the kinds of OER faculty want to use, findings line up with prior literature. Implications: As course materials become more sophisticated and the range of topics taught in computing continue to grow, the communal effort required to maintain a broad collection of high quality OERs also grows. Understanding what factors influence instructors to contribute to this effort and how we can facilitate the contribution, discovery, and use of OERs is fundamental to both how OER repositories should be organized, as well as how funding initiatives to support them should be structured. 

This full research paper explores how second-chance testing can be used as a strategy for mitigating students’ test anxiety in STEM courses, thereby boosting students’ performance and experiences. Second-chance testing is a testing strategy where students are given an opportunity to take an assessment twice. We conducted a mixed-methods study to explore second-chance testing as a potential solution to test anxiety. First, we interviewed a diverse group of STEM students (N = 23) who had taken courses with second-chance testing to ask about the stress and anxiety associated with testing. We then administered a survey on test anxiety to STEM students in seven courses that offered second-chance tests at Midwestern University (N = 448). We found that second-chance testing led to a 30% reduction in students’ reported test anxiety. Students also reported reduced stress throughout the semester, even outside of testing windows, due to the availability of second-chance testing. Our study included an assortment of STEM courses where second-chance testing was deployed, which indicates that second-chance testing is a viable strategy for reducing anxiety in a variety of contexts. We also explored whether the resultant reduction in test anxiety led to student complacency, encouraged procrastination, or other suboptimal student behavior because of the extra chance provided. We found that the majority of students reported that they worked hard on their initial test attempts even when second-chance testing was available. 

We conducted an across-semester quasi-experimental study that compared students' outcomes under frequent and infrequent testing regimens in an introductory computer science course. Students in the frequent testing (4 quizzes and 4 exams) semester outperformed the infrequent testing (1 midterm and 1 final exam) semester by 9.1 to 13.5 percentage points on code writing questions. We complement these performance results with additional data from surveys, interviews, and analysis of textbook behavior. In the surveys, students report a preference for the smaller number of exams, but rated the exams in the frequent testing semester to be both less difficult and less stressful, in spite of the exams containing identical content. In the interviews, students predominantly indicated (1) that the frequent testing regimen encourages better study habits (e.g., more attention to work, less cramming) and leads to better learning, (2) that frequent testing reduces test anxiety, and (3) that the frequent testing regimen was more fair, but these opinions were not universally held. The students' impressions that the frequent testing regimen would lead to better study habits is borne out in our analysis of students' activities in the course's interactive textbook. In the frequent testing semester, students spent more time on textbook readings and appeared to answer textbook questions more earnestly (i.e., less "gaming the system'' by using hints and brute force).