Poster presented at the Dagstuhl Seminar "Assessing Learning in Introductory Computer Science" (http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=16072). I argue that we have to consider what the learner wants to do and wants to be (i.e., their desired Community of Practice) when assessing learning. Different CoP, different outcomes, different assessments.

1. Critiquing CS Assessments
from a CS for All Lens
How much do we assume a Community of Practice when we assess?
How do we asses for different Communities of Practice, and different
sets of CS skills and pracice?
Mark Guzdial
Georgia Tech

2. Do all of these use the same
CS practices and knowledge?
Would we use the same assessments to measure expertise?

3. • A software engineer who builds
applications for end-users.
• A mathematician who works in
Mathematica her whole life.
• A graphic designer who
programs in JavaScript to
automate Photoshop processes.
• The data scientist who scrubs
data with Perl and analyzes in R.
• A chemical engineer who writes
20 new lines of MATLAB code
each day, then throws them
away.
• The office worker who builds
Excel macros weekly for co-
workers.
• The homeowner who writes
home automation scripts.
• The musician who codes live in
front of an audience.

4. CS for Everyone/All
• Efforts in many countries to make
computing education available to all
students.
• Do all students need or want the
same CS education?
• Do they all want the same
expertise? To be the same kind of
practitioner?

5. Sociocognitive Theories
of Learning
• Situated Learning
(Lave & Wenger) says
that students seek to
join a community of
practice.
• They want to adopt
the practices and
learn the values of
those at the center of
the community of
practice.

6. Beyond a
Software
Development
CoP
Most people who
program are not
part of a
software
developer
community of
practice (CoP).

7. Student values based on perceived CoP
Students who value media
development want
different kinds of
programming languages
than those who want to be
programmers.
Authenticity matters.
(Shaffer & Resnick, 1999)

8. Concept Inventories
Holger Danielsiek, Wolfgang Paul, and Jan Vahrenhold. 2012. Detecting and
understanding students' misconceptions related to algorithms and data structures.
In Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science
Education (SIGCSE '12).
Critique:
• “Based on expert interviews and the analysis of 400 exams we were
able to identify several core topics which are prone to error.”
• Are those experts in the CoP I care about?
• Were those exams by students like me?

9. FCS1 and SCS1
Allison Elliott Tew and Mark Guzdial. 2010. Developing a validated assessment of
fundamental CS1 concepts. In Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on
Computer science education(SIGCSE '10).
Critique:
• “Previous studies of student programming ability have raised
questions about students' ability to problem solve, read and analyze
code, and understand introductory computing concepts.”
• What kinds of problems do experts solve in my CoP?
• Is that the kind of CS that my CoP uses? That my CoP Values?
(Re: Dorn at CHI 2010 on the use of exception handling among web
designers.)

10. Attitude Assessment
Brian Dorn and Allison Elliott Tew. 2013. Becoming experts: measuring attitude
development in introductory computer science. In Proceeding of the 44th ACM
technical symposium on Computer science education (SIGCSE '13).
Critique:
• “We have begun the process of examining how students perceive the
field of computer science by employing a novice-to-expert continuum
framework.”
• Is there only one such continuum?
• Are those experts in the CoP I care about?

11. Blocks-Based Languages
David Weintrop. 2015. Comparing Text-based, Blocks-based, and Hybrid Blocks/Text
Programming Tools. In Proceedings of the eleventh annual International Conference
on International Computing Education Research (ICER '15).
Critique:
• Will all CoP value text over blocks?
• Blocks are better than text for many tasks.
• Should we be promoting blocks-based languages, despite the de-
valuation of blocks-based language by the software development
CoP?

12. Claims
• Computer scientists and professional software developers are not the
appropriate target audience when defining the target skills, practices,
or attitudes when defining CS for All.
• Computing practices in many CoP are still being defined.
We can’t do it. They have to develop within the communities.
• Can we influence them?
• Computing is a literacy. There will be more than one kind.