Visual Topic Dependency Models Supporting Multiple Facets of Assessment Design and Delivery at Scale

Educational environments continue to rapidly evolve to address the needs of diverse, growing student populations, while embracing advances in pedagogy and technology. In this changing landscape, the design and delivery of high-quality assessments become even more challenging. In particular, ensuring that there is consistency among assessments of different offerings of a course, providing meaningful feedback about students’ achievements, and tracking students’ progression over time are all challenging tasks to be done at scale. In this paper, a collection of visual Topic Dependency Models (TDMs) is proposed that addresses three facets of the challenges noted above. It visualises the required topics and their dependencies at a course level (e.g., CS 100); visualises assessment data (material coverage and student achievements) at a classroom level (e.g., CS 100 Section 001) both at one point in time (static) and over time (dynamic). The models share a common, two-weighted graph foundation. The collection is illustrated using examples drawn from a high-enrollment introductory course in C programming for engineering students.