Student Perceptions of Fairness and Security in a Versioned Programming Exam

Chinedu Emeka; Craig Zilles

doi:10.1145/3372782.3406275

Student Perceptions of Fairness and Security in a Versioned Programming Exam

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

Using multiple versions of exams is a common exam security technique to prevent cheating in a variety of contexts. While psycho-metric techniques are routinely used by large high-stakes testing companies to ensure equivalence between exam versions, such approaches are generally cost and effort prohibitive for individual classrooms. As such, exam versions practically present a tension between exam security (which is enhanced by the versioning) and fairness (which results from difficulty variation between versions). In this work, we surveyed students on their perceptions of this trade-off between exam security and fairness on a versioned programming exam and found that significant populations value each aspect over the other. Furthermore, we found that students' expression of concerns about unfairness was not correlated to whether they had received harder versions of the course's most recent exam, but was correlated to lower overall course performance.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	ICER 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
Pages	25-35
Number of pages	11
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450370929
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3372782.3406275
State	Published - Aug 10 2020
Event	16th Annual ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, ICER 2020 - Virtual, Online, New Zealand Duration: Aug 10 2020 → Aug 12 2020

Publication series

Name	ICER 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research

Conference

Conference	16th Annual ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, ICER 2020
Country	New Zealand
City	Virtual, Online
Period	8/10/20 → 8/12/20

Keywords

assessment
exam security
fairness
programming
question variants
randomized exams

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Computational Theory and Mathematics
Computer Science Applications
Software
Education

Access to Document

10.1145/3372782.3406275

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Cite this

Emeka, C., & Zilles, C. (2020). Student Perceptions of Fairness and Security in a Versioned Programming Exam. In ICER 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (pp. 25-35). (ICER 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3372782.3406275

Student Perceptions of Fairness and Security in a Versioned Programming Exam. / Emeka, Chinedu; Zilles, Craig.

ICER 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research. Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. p. 25-35 (ICER 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Emeka, C & Zilles, C 2020, Student Perceptions of Fairness and Security in a Versioned Programming Exam. in ICER 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research. ICER 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 25-35, 16th Annual ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, ICER 2020, Virtual, Online, New Zealand, 8/10/20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3372782.3406275

Emeka C, Zilles C. Student Perceptions of Fairness and Security in a Versioned Programming Exam. In ICER 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research. Association for Computing Machinery. 2020. p. 25-35. (ICER 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research). https://doi.org/10.1145/3372782.3406275

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