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Specifications and Contract Grading in Computer Science Education

Published: 07 March 2024 Publication History

Abstract

With the recent growth in popularity of alternative evaluation methods, two methodologies have become particularly prevalent in CS education literature: Specifications grading and contract grading. Recent work has shown that these novel evaluation approaches can have positive impacts in the classroom and lead to more equitable outcomes for students. However, there is not yet a consensus on terminology, implementation details and best practices. In this work, we review the literature on the use of specifications and contract grading in CS education. We find that while there is a good deal of promising research, there is a great deal of variation in methodologies and a sparsity of evaluation of the efficacy of learning outcomes.

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  • (2024)Alternative Evaluation in CS Education Research: A Systematic Literature MapProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3626253.3635537(1670-1671)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2024

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    SIGCSE 2024: Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1
    March 2024
    1583 pages
    ISBN:9798400704239
    DOI:10.1145/3626252
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Published: 07 March 2024

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    Author Tags

    1. alternative evaluation
    2. contract grading
    3. literature review
    4. mastery grading
    5. specifications grading

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    • (2024)Alternative Evaluation in CS Education Research: A Systematic Literature MapProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3626253.3635537(1670-1671)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2024

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