Abstract
Several weeks after new first-year students in Computer Science arrived, many lecturers complain that some of their students are not well-equipped with all competences necessary to study successfully. Hence, they struggle. This situation appears at different universities in various countries. Otherwise, there are students in every place, which meet the study requirements rather easily. This paper describes the development of a test, assessing first-year students' cognitive competences as well as basic knowledge in maths and computer usage. The test allows insights into the first-year students' initial level of competences. Thus, lecturers can base their lectures on the students current level. We conducted this test in the last four years: a pilot study as well as three regular runs. Until now we collected test results of over 750 students. First insights into the results facilitate the assumption that important competences are lacking and already influence our teaching in introductory courses. The next step is to clarify with help of the data, which competences influence the study success respectively the study failure.
Bibliographic data
D. Zehetmeier, A. Böttcher and V. Thurner, "Design and evaluation of a test for assessing CS-first-year students' cognitive competences," 2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), Athens, Greece, 2017, pp. 726-734,
