Investigating current object oriented programming assessment method in Malaysia’s universities

Abstract

One of the most influential programming paradigms today is object oriented (OO) programming and it is widely used in education and industry. Recognizing the importance of equipping students with OO knowledge and skill, it is not surprising that most Computer Science degree programs offer OO-related courses. Deciding how to assess each student’s programming skill is one of the biggest challenges for educators who teach programming courses. Traditional approach of assessment of object oriented programming courses provides a method for assigning numerical scores to determine grades. This approach rarely reveals information about how students actually understand and can program with OO characteristics or apply their OO knowledge to solve programming problems. This paper summarizes current trends in educational assessment and relates these to the assessment of student outcomes in OOP courses. The method used for this investigation is by conducting surveys amongst OO programming educators in a few Malaysia’s universities. Results from this survey, it shows that there is a need to have a better assessment approach in trying to better understand and facilitate the quality of assessment for OO programming.