ITICSE 2015 WG5: System Kick off. Please provide your questions, games and activities

[fmai...@gmail.com]

20th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

Working Group 5:

A repository for high school computer science questions and visual assessment tools

CALL FOR TEACHERS
The members of the fifth working group at the ACM 20th annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (http://www.iticse2015.mii.vu.lt/) are pleased to invite Computer Science and STEM teachers to participate, as co-designers, in the activities of the working group.
In particular, the aims of the working group are:

1. Review existing sets of knowledge, competencies, and skills for 21st century high school computer science students which can be useful in a broad range of contexts.
2. Identify the types of questions that are useful for assessing the above competencies and skills and that can be supported by existing digital tools, e.g. true/false questions, multiple choice questions, stacks of visual blocks, ordering blocks of code, finding the right sequence of blocks of code, logically ordering a set of blocks, finding bugs, predicting output, etc.
3. Collect an initial set of computer science questions for high school students that should be as independent as possible from syntax-related issues, and should serve for school or university entrance and aptitudinal tests, formative assessments and competency assessments.

The working group members strongly believe that besides competencies in reading, writing and arithmetic, students have to be provided with a solid background on digital literacy, not only as users of computer technology, but especially as creators of digital artifacts and computational thinkers. This requires effective means to assess the students' background and achievements on computational thinking and computer science concepts.

By involving teachers in contributing the questions they deem more suitable and effective to uncover students' difficulties and progress in knowledge and skills relating to computational thinking and computer science, we aim at creating a useful, searchable repository of resources for the community of teachers and learners. Moreover, by collecting the input from teachers from diverse countries, it will be possible to prepare country-wise curriculum assessment questions, and by highlighting commonalities and differences it will be possible to put forward guidelines for common competencies that all students should possess in order to be prepared for higher studies, typically involving student international mobility.

For those reasons the working group team has designed and implemented a system to collect not only questions in various formats, but also tasks and activities that can be challenging and inspiring to the kids. We especially welcome questions and activities that involve use of visual languages, use of games and puzzles, or any approach with a focus on Computer Science principles rather on the syntax of programming languages.

Please find the current version of the system on the development server @: http://23.251.146.172/

The system, in Beta testing, at this stage aims at kicking-off the process of question contributions from our initial list of collaborators.

Please:

1) Provide questions (at least one, if possible 10 on average, no upper limit). The method for contributing games or other activities is the same as for the questions.

2) Revise and comment on at least one of the available questions.

3) Suggest/review other assessment activities (games, engaging tasks, etc...)

Although the platform may be live for a longer period, we kindly ask that you provide the majority of your inputs before the 28th of August. On the 26th of August we will ask you to respond, before the 28th of August, to an on-line survey.

You can login after registering with the system. Please report any bug to fmai...@gmail.com.

Thank you very much for your precious support and contribution.

The working group team

[fmai...@gmail.com]

[Francesco Maiorana]

*20th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science
Education*

*Working Group 5:*

A repository for high school computer science questions and visual
assessment tools

*CALL FOR TEACHERS *

[image: https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif]

Please find the current version of the system on the development server @:
http://23.251.146.172/



The system, in Beta testing, at this stage aims at kicking-off the process
of question contributions from our initial list of collaborators.



Please:



1) Provide questions (at least one, if possible 10 on average, no
upper limit). The method for contributing games or other activities is the
same as for the questions.



2) Revise and comment on at least one of the available questions.



3) Suggest/review other assessment activities (games, engaging tasks,
etc...)



Although the platform may be live for a longer period, we kindly ask that
you provide the majority of your inputs before the 28th of August. On the 26
th of August we will ask you to respond, before the 28th of August, to an
on-line survey.



You can login after registering with the system. Please report any bug to
fmai...@gmail.com.



Thank you very much for your precious support and contribution.



The working group team

--
Francesco Maiorana
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica, Elettronica e Informatica
Universita' di Catania
Viale A. Doria 6
95125 Catania, Italy
https://sites.google.com/site/maioranafrancescospes/