Evaluating the Effectiveness of Course Assessments Method in Determining Student’s Competency Level in Programming

Abstract

Students who choose to study in Computer Science in Malaysia at the Degree level, basically have a diverse background of academic achievement at the final level of their secondary school. Although there are minimum requirements set for admission to Computer Science courses, students tend to demonstrate different achievements after being at university. It is possible that the method of evaluation of educational institutions is not in line with the actual skills mastered by the students. Therefore, this study takes all the test data that has been collected before and assesses which type of test is actually most effective to determine the level of student’s competency in programming. This study proves that compared to other type of assessments, students’ achievement in the final examination, additional lab assessment with challenging questions and test correlated positively with the student’s programming competency. Our experiments also prove that if the final exam score is less than 60%, it is very likely that the student should be classified as incompetent. This suggests the final exam marks should carry significant weightage so that students do not just rely on carried marks to get a high grade.