School of Information Technologies over Confidence and Confusion in Using Bloom for Programming Fundamentals Assessment

A computer science student is required to progress from a novice programmer to a proficient developer through the programming fundamentals sequence of subjects. This paper deals with the capturing and representation of learning progression. The key contribution is a web-based interactive tutorial that enables computer science tutors and lecturers to practice applying the Bloom Taxonomy in classifying programming exam questions. The tutorial captures participant confidence and self-explanations for each Bloom classification exercise. The results of an evaluation with 10 participants were analyzed for consistency and accuracy in the application of Bloom. The confidence and selfexplanation measures were used to identify problem areas in the application of Bloom to programming fundamentals. The tutorial and findings are valuable contributions to future ACM revisions, which are expected to have a continued emphasis on Bloom [9].