Recruiting Experts: Toward a Concept Inventory for Computer Science 2 (Abstract Only)

A concept inventory is a research-based multiple-choice test that measures a student's knowledge of a set of concepts while also capturing conceptions and misconceptions they may have about the topic under consideration. It can aid educators and researchers in a variety of ways. When administered at both the beginning and end of a course, it measures the amount of knowledge that students gain during the course. For a given student, a concept inventory points out the topics that they need to focus on and can give their instructor specific misconceptions to tackle. For a researcher, concept inventories routinely administered at the end of a course show the effects that different teaching methods have on student understanding. Concept inventories for computer science currently exist for many topics but not for a course on basic data structures, commonly refereed to as Computer Science 2 (CS2). To aid in assessing students' understanding of the material of this core course in the computer science curriculum, we are developing a concept inventory for CS2. We are seeking input from instructors and researchers with knowledge and experience of CS2 (experts) to establish the set of important and challenging topics that are fundamental to a CS2 course, using an iterative consensus-reaching methodology (the Delphi method). These topics will be used to create a concept inventory, which will then undergo validity and reliability checking. Interested members of the SIGCSE community are invited to attend the presentation and consider participating as experts.