A Placement Test for Computer Science: Design,Implementation, and Analysis

An introductory CS1 course presents problems for educators and students due to students' diverse background in programming knowledge and exposure. Students who enroll in CS1 also have different expectations and motivations. Prompted by the curricular guidelines for undergraduate programmes in computer science released in 2001 by the ACM/IEEE, and driven by a departmental project to reinvent the undergraduate computer science and computer engineering curricula at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, we are currently implementing a series of changes which will improve our introductory courses. One key component of our project is an online placement examination tied to the cognitive domain that assesses student knowledge and intellectual skills. Our placement test is also integrated into a comprehensive educational research design containing a pre- and posttest framework for assessing student learning and providing valuable feedback for needed instructional revisions. In this paper, we focus on the design and implementation of our placement exam and present an analysis of the data collected to date.     

Multicolinearity and Indicator Redundancy Problem in World University Rankings: An Example Using Times Higher Education World University Ranking 2013–2014 Data

World university ranking systems used the weight‐and‐sum approach to combined indicator scores into overall scores on which the universities are then ranked. This approach assumes that the indicators all independently contribute to the overall score in the specified proportions. In reality, this assumption is doubtful as the indicators tend to correlate with one another and some highly so. This causes the multicolinearity problem rending some predictors redundant. At the same time, some indicators may contribute so little to the overall score and thus making them non‐contributing. When overlapping and non‐contributing indicators are retained, the overall score takes on a meaning very different from what it is originally intended to be. Using data for the top 101 universities of the Times Higher Education World University Ranking 2013–2014, these problems are demonstrated and a solution is suggested. This resulted in a new overall scores made up of only two of the six indicators, namely ‘research’ and ‘citation’. The universities were then ranked on the basis of the new overall score and compared with the original. It was also noticed that some of the universities have had their original overall scores inflated by the non‐contributing indicators and hence were over‐ranked. Implications for using the new overall and ranking are discussed.     

How Well Performance in Curriculum-based Tests Predicts that in Life-based Tests: A Study of 12th-grade Students Learning Chinese Language

A sample of 209 secondary (12th grade) students were tested for their knowledge of Chinese characters, words, and idioms as specified in a Chinese Language syllabus. The students also took comprehension tests in the form of cloze tests based on passages selected from Chinese newspapers and literary works, covering occupations, social events, sports, leisure pursuits and international news. Although performance in curriculum-based tests was satisfactory, the students were found to have difficulty comprehending life-based reading materials. Probable causes for the lack of consistency between performances in the tests using different reading materials are discussed.     

Teacher Education Objectives: A Survey of Student Views

This article is a summary of the Survey of Teacher Education Objectives: The Views of Diploma in Education Students published as a monograph in 1982. A report of the previous study was published in 1981 and a summary of the report appeared in Vol. 4 No. 1 of this Journal.     

A comprehensive survey on the status of social and professional issues in United States undergraduate computer science programs and recommendations

A national web-based survey was administered to 700 undergraduate computer science (CS) programs in the United States as part of a stratified random sample of 797 undergraduate CS programs. The 251 program responses (36% response rate) regarding social and professional issues are presented. This article describes the demographics of the respondents, presents results concerning whether programs teach social and professional issues, how social and professional issues are integrated, perceptions of CS faculty regarding the importance of social and professional issues, pedagogies used to teach social and professional issues, and what specific social and professional topics have been included in the CS curriculum. Additionally, we (a) provide suggestions for CS programs regarding the integration of social and professional issues into the CS curriculum, (b) suggest ways to encourage more social and professional coverage in CS programs, pedagogy, and (c) recommend what social and professional topics should be included in future CS curriculum reports.     

Test of Moral Values: Its Development and Try-out

The need for a more vigorous and organized Moral Education programme in Singapore schools is emphatically made in the Report on the Ministry of Education, 1979 (Goh et al., 1980). It recommended that Moral Education be formally taught as a subject in the school curriculum throughout primary and secondary schools. The concern for Moral Education manifested itself in yet another attempt by a group of parliamentarians, resulting in the publication of the Report on Moral Education (Ong et al., 1979). This report serves as a common frame of reference for all Moral Education programmes currently implemented in Singapore schools. The state of Moral Education in Singapore schools was systematically documented and relevant issues were objectively studied in 1981 by a committee appointed by the Ministry of Education (Eng et al., 1981). Subsequently, exising programmes were improved on and new programmes introduced. At present, there are no less than six moral education programmes, both secular and religious, in Singapore schools.