Student Assessment in PBL-Based Teaching Computing: Proposals and Results

This Research Full Paper presents an overview of student assessment proposals for Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in Computing Education. Computing teaching has many challenges, as it requires different skills from students, often subjective and difficult to assess. In fact, technical knowledge alone is not enough to fully understand what is being taught, but the interpretive and logical skills to deal with practical problems and non-technical skills such as group work, creativity, critical vision, ability to cooperate and communicate. Active learning methodologies as Problem-Based Learning (PBL) have been used to dealing with such challenges, broadly developing technical and non-techniques skills in students. However, despite the benefits of PBL, the student assessment process is one of the points that present its own adversities and, therefore, an aspect that deserves greater attention. To better understand the nuances of this process and how it can contributes to the teaching and learning process based on PBL, this study aimed to investigate primary studies in the last two decades, seeking answers to the following research questions: RQ1) What assessment models are being used?; RQ2) Which aspects are evaluated?; RQ3) What criteria and media have been defined?; RQ4) Who gets involved in the assessment process?; RQ5) What is the ideal frequency to conduct the evaluations?; RQ6) What can these models reveal? As a research method, this study used the Systematic Literature Review method proposed by Kitchenham. As main conclusions, it was possible to identify that: generally, computing education based on PBL occurs at the undergraduate level, having as main educational objective the teaching of technical content; in practice, the need for a diverse teaching team is not reflected, the traditional student-teacher remains; to evaluate students, it is necessary to consider several aspects, technical and non-technical, defining specific criteria for each one of them; the main benefits for students are related to changes in behavior, development of soft skills and better absorption of technical knowledge; as main challenges for students, the difficulty to understand the nuances of the proposed problem and to be the main responsible for devising a solution for it without the figure of a teacher to give a clear definition of how to do it stands out.