I teach programming for non-majors:

http://cs1313.ou.edu/

We assume zero programming experience, though
some modest fraction of them have a little.

These are mostly engineering students, with
some science students, and rarely more than a
handful of non-STEM students. They tend to be
mostly first and second year students, but we
get some upper division students too.

We assess as follows:

55%: programming assignments (45% projects, 10% web exercises)
35%: 3 exams plus weekly quizzes (25% exams, 10% quizzes)
10%: lab attendance

Exams tend to have the following sections:

(1) Short answer (mostly conceptual)
(2) What is the output of this program?
(3) Write some code

We do open book, open notes -- in my
experience, memorizing isn't a skill that
aligns well with programming, but looking
things up is.

If you look at the homeworks posted on our
course website, the quiz questions are a
verbatim subset of the homework questions,
and the exam questions are pretty similar.

Frankly, I put a lot more stock in their
programming assignments than in their
exams and quizzes, which is why things are
weighted the way they are.

Henry Neeman ([email protected])

----------

On Tue, 6 Dec 2016, Olav Vahtras wrote:

>Dear all,In Software Carpentry/Data Carpentry workshops we try to adopt
>pedagogical principles that are proven to enhance student learning
>outcomes. However, one aspect of the teaching/learning process is not dealt
>with at all: assessment (no exams!)
>
>As I am sure many of you are teaching programming courses with similar
>content using similar principles in your home institutions, I would like to
>ask about your experiences with assessment of different forms. Does it make
>sense to have a traditional written exam? How do you handle grading of the
>students, do have pass/fail or some other scale with more levels and how do
>you define those levels.
>
>I am currently developing an undergraduate Python course for students in
>biotechnology which have normally have basic computer skills, but limited
>programming experience.
>
>Best regards,
>Olav Vahtras
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