4/27/04

WEB DEVELOPMENT

ASSESSMENT DEBRIEFINGS
Under construction!  Will be updated throughout the semester.

1. INTRODUCTION
2. PREASSESSMENT DEBRIEFINGS
3. ASSESSMENT DEBRIEFINGS

     This is the page where feedback will be given to the class as a whole. (Feedback to individuals will be sent via e-mail or by adding comments to their Web pages.)  Debriefings will normally be focused on the current Lab assignment, PreAssessment, or Assessment.

PREASSESSMENT  and PROFICIENCY EVALUATION DEBRIEFINGS:

These debriefings are published on the PreAssessment Hub.

The following comments are addressed to the class as a whole.  They pertain to those questions with which the class had the most difficulty.

• Assessment 1:
• The class average was 68.5; my ideal assessment would have an average of 68 because everyone could raise themself a letter grade by doing the rework.  Not bad.  Anyway the normalization factor is 10 points. 
  
• The average on questions 41-45 (directly from the preassessment) was 77%, not bad.
• The average on questions 46-50 (directly from the proficiency evaluation), SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS IN THE COURSE, was 71%, a little disappointing.
• No one got 10/10, but two got 9/10.
  
• I REALLY don't understand how people miss any of questions 41-50, especially on the rework.  They are all online, in the PreAssessment (questions 41-45) or Proficiency Evaluation (questions 46-50), and you can take them as often as you want to get 100%; this should be a "GIVEAWAY" on the assessment (especially rework!).  I am really hoping that everyone starts with almost 20% head start when taking an assessment.  The essence of my policy of normalization is the belief that students, after they correct their mistakes, are "better" than their original grade, and I want to give them credit for this improvement.  Part of this is based on the "fact (?)" that EVERYONE should have 100% understanding of 90 questions (40 from the Preassessment and 50 from the Proficiency Evaluation) even before they take an assessment; after the rework I should be able to say this about 140 questions!   HOWEVER, when students miss some of questions 41-50 this emphasizes that my assumption is NOT correct!!   From now on, PLEASE make my assumption correct!
1. By difinition, the Proficiency Evaluation questions are the "best" questions I can ask.  That's why I put them on a "public" evaluation, so that EVERY student EVERY year can understand the answers to them.  Therefore you shouldn't be surprised that I am VERY disappointed when students miss any of questions 46-50.  When they are missed on the rework, I am HORRIFIED!!  When you miss questions that you can check the answers for online that is a real indication of lack of effort.  PLEASE DON'T LET THESE HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE!!
2. If you "memorize" the answers to the preassessment and proficiency evaluation questions, you will probably forget them, perhaps by the time that the assessment rolls around.  However, if you take the time to understand the answer and understand why other answers are not the "best" answer to a particular question, you should be able to "come up" with that best answer when you see the same question again - on the assessment!  So, if you are not "comfortable" with all the answers on the preassessment and proficiency evaluation, PLEASE get comfortable by discussing the questions/answers with classmates, in class, or on the forum!
3. I record the % of questions 41-50 that you get correct along with the overall score.  That % is an indication of your effort in this course, i.e. how much effort you put into using the Q&A&F (questions and answers and feedback) I build into the course.  Therefore, if, at the end of the course, you are on a grade borderline, a good % on questions 41-50 will help you receive the higher grade, but a poor % will almost certainly result in me leaving your grade at the lower level - this is a "swing" of a whole letter grade!
• I also don't understand why people miss questions on the rework.  Perhaps it is partially because they have yet to recognize the power of the Find in Frame... command found under the Edit menu of Navigator; see section 3.7 of the COSC 330 Checklists.  (If you are not viewing a page that has frames, the command is (not surprisingly) simply Find in Page....)
• The most frequently missed questions were (boldface indicates questions missed most frequently on the rework as well):6, 8, 13, 15, 16, 20, 21, 23, 26, 27, and 36.  Since most of you corrected your own mistakes on the others, only the boldface questions are discussed below.  (Note that the grader does not give me the wrong answers chosen, so I'll just address what I think is probably the problem.)
• Q6: Since Navigator and Outlook are software, only "client" and "server" are possible answers.  (Note that these words are also used to refer to hardware, but that is irrelevant to this question.)
  
• Q8: Do a Find in Page...  on the available answers in LM I.  Note that the answer is the key to efficient network traffic, in that it also is essential to dynamic routing.
  
• Q15: If one replaced the word "implements" with "interprets" or "translates" the answer would be HTML.
• Q26 is an example of the relatively difficult "best" answer question.  If the best answer were not in the list "b VRML" would be the best answer because VRML is a 3D modelling language, not really a Web development language; however, the best answer is the only one of those listed that is not even a language.
• Q36: Use Find in Page..., in LM II, on the answers.  (I admit this is a rather obscure, unimportant concept.)
  
• The most fundamentally important  questions include:
1. Important questions whose content will not be covered further during the course are 1-3, 5-7, 13-20, 32, 40-42, and 44-47.  If you are unclear about any them, post your queries on the Class Forum.
2. Questions on Important subjects that will be discussed in more detail later include 22-31, 34, 38, 46 and 49.
• Questions worth additional comment:
• Questions 1-21 cover concepts that are background to Web development (content covered in COSC120) but not critical to the understanding of Web development.
• Questions that I consider to be "hard"are 36 and 39, i.e. they cover relatively obscure concepts that have minimal coverage in the LMs.
  
• Q3, Q12, Q21, and 27 are examples of the most difficult kind of multiple choice question, one whose answer is "none of these".  This requires the ability "recall" (as opposed to "recognize" in questions where the answer is visible), i.e. you must remember or figure out the answer, not just recognize it.  I normally inclulde a couple of these, so be prepared for them in the future; they will ALWAYS be on what I consider to be a very important concept.  SAQ: What are the answers to these questions?
  
• Q4:  The name should have given this away; what is a synonym for "path".
• Q10: The key word here is"sychronous".
• Q13: You can remember this because routing implies network, and the "I" in "IP" stands for "Internet".
  
• Q18: This answer is profound; it allows an HTML document to link to any location in any file on the local system, even when not connected to a network.
  
• Q23: Both applets and scripts are "small programs".   SAQ: What is the difference?
• Q25: What would the answer be if you replaced "data" with "text"?
• Q30: What would the answers be if you replaced "lossless" with "lossy"?
• Q41-Q50:
  
• There are nonsense answers in the following questions: 1-4, 5(2), 9, 12, 20, 25, 28, 29, 31, 37, 38, and 40.
• I am assuming that once you have eleminated two wrong answers, that you will have the right answer to every question if you study your rework, so I do not ask you to rework the rework!   However, please make that assumption accurate, by correcting your mistakes yourself.  if there are any remain confusion about any question, post them on the forum.
• Assessment 2:
  
1. The class average was 61%, a drop of 7% from Assessment 1 (disappointing!).  On the other hand, a decrease in grades of assessment 2 is not unusual;  I think the subject matter is the most difficult in the course because it covers uninteresting details of HTML, which you don't have to "know" anyway; you can always look them up if you need them.  Anyway, the normalization factor is 17. which makes the assessment a "fair test".
   
• The average on questions 41-46 was 82%, (up from assessment 1), but on questions 46-50, SOME OF THE MOST IMMPORTANT QUESTIONS OF THE COURSE, was 68% (down from assessment 1) this still very disappointing. 
• One person (out of seven) got 10/10 and three got 9/10; this is incouraging!
  
• Only one person got 50/50 on the rework.
  
2. The most frequently missed questions were (boldface indicates questions missed most frequently on the rework as well): 1, 2, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 35, 38, 39, and 45.  Since most of you corrected your own mistakes on the others, only the boldface questions are discussed below.  (Note that the grader does not give me the wrong answers chosen, so I'll just address what I think is probably the problem.)
• Q12:  I made a mistake on this question. The correct answer is "all of these", which was not available. If you missed this question, give me your scantron (place it,  with the question circled, in the COSC 330 IN folder), and I will correct my mistake.
• Being a relatively unimportant detail about HTML tags, missing this is not a "big deal".  Do a Find in Page...  on the available answers in LM III.
• Q23: I guess the two nonsense answers were too close to the correct answer, but this makes it a good question for "debugging" your learning.
  
• Q29: A relatively unimportant detail.  Do a Find in Page...  on the available answers in LM IV.
• Q38: See question 45.  I didn't notice this redundancy, but that preassessment question (Q45) provides a good hint.
  
3. The most fundamentally important  questions include 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 12, 16, 17, 21, 25-31, 33-36, 38, 40, 41 and  44-50.
   
4. Questions worth additional comment:
• Questions that I consider to be "hard"are 6, 8, 11, 14, 20, 23, 24, 29, and 27, i.e. they cover relatively obscure concepts that have minimal coverage in the LMs and are not critical to the understanding of Web development.
  
• Q1, Q9, and 50 are examples of the most difficult kind of multiple choice question, those that requires the ability "recall" (as opposed to "recognize" in questions where the answer is visible), i.e. you must remember or figure out the answer, not just recognize it.  I normally inclulde a couple of these, so be prepared for them in the future; they will ALWAYS be on what I consider to be a very important concept.  SAQ: What are the correct words that answers these questions?
• Q5: If you haven't actually used the answer, you should be able to determine it by using a process of elemination.
  
• Q10: Compare with Q17.
• Q15: Note the difference between "inline" and "block-level".
  
• Q16: This techniques is often overused.  Remember, one of the main points of hypertext is that is formats itself to suit the user's view.
  
• Q20, Q24, Q36, and Q37 are examples of the relatively difficult "best" answer question.  If a more general, "best" answer were not in the list, other answers would be acceptable.
• In Q20,  "c) lowscr" would be an acceptable answer.
  
• In Q24,  "a) frame" would be an acceptable answer, although, strictly speaking, a frame is one of the divisions, not "a tag used to divide...".
• In Q36,  any answer could acceptable; however, only one of these is essential to ("required" for) multimedia.  (This kind of multiple choice question (where all of the answers are acceptable but one is the best) is at powerful learning tool.)
• In Q37,  "d) Flash" would be an acceptable answer, but it is not strictly a video technology.   SAQ: What company developed and maintained the technology of the correct answer?
• Q22: The word "object" is key here, but it can be misleading to computer science students because it really should be "abstract object", which is a class in C++, Java, etc.
  
• Q30: Acquiring all the necessary _______ is the key to being to "play" all possible multimedia files with a browser.
  
• Q34: This question is similar to Q46.  The redundancy was not intended, just overlooked.
• Q38: This question is similar to Q45.  The redundancy was not intended, just overlooked.
• Q41-Q50: Is it possible that some people still do not know that these questions were all available in the online Preassessment 2 and Proficiency Evaluation 2?  If so, READ section 5.7.1 of the COSC 330 Checklists.
5. There are nonsense answers (purely from my imagination) in the following questions: 1, 3, 7, 10, 12, 14(2), 15, 20, 23(2), 24, 27(2), 28, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 39, 47, and 48.  (Note that there are no nonsense answers in Q41-45, because preassessment questions, by definition, have answers, all of which, are answers to some question in the course.  This, of course is not true of proficiency evaluation questions, Q46-50.)
   
6. I am assuming that once you have eleminated two wrong answers, that you will have the right answer to every question if you study your rework, so I do not ask you to rework the rework!   However, please make that assumption accurate, by correcting your mistakes yourself.  if there are any remain confusion about any question, post them on the forum.
• Assessment 3: To be published after the rework