A cost-benefit analysis of continuous assessment

Abstract

The first course on programming is fundamental in the Facultat d’Informàtica de Barcelona. After a major redesign of the Programming-1 course in 2006 to give it a more practical flavor, an increasing number of measures have been undertaken over the years to try to increase its pass rate while maintaining a fixed quality level. These measures, that can be roughly summarized as an important increase in assessment, imply an increase in the workload of both students and instructors that does not always correspond to the increase of pass rate they provide. In this paper, and within the context of this course, we analyze quantitatively the amount of work required from faculty to implement the series of measures and we conclude that, within this course, continuous assessment is expensive and has reached its limit.