FACT: A Formative Assessment Criteria Tool for the Assessment of Students' Programming Tasks

In this study we present our developed formative assessment tool for homework assignments in computer science and its use. The tool enables instructors to define a list of criteria by which the students' assignments are evaluated. Each assignment may include many problems, each is assigned with specific weights for each criteria. The instructors feed the assessments into the tool adding literal comments and justifications. The tool then generates automatic report to each student including summative report on the current assignment referring to their achievements in each criterion in each problem, the student's relative score and her progress across the criteria along the course timeline. The tool generates automatically charts to present the above information. The tool was examined on a pilot group of college students that study a course in Object-oriented programming. Preliminary results reveal that most of the students were satisfied with the assessment process and the reports produced by the tool. They particularly praised its contribution to their ability to provide solutions that are not only correct but also modular, readable and tested.