Pre-course Interviews

In this chapter:

Intent
Problem
Solution
Applicability
How to Implement
See Also
Source
Community Discussion

Intent

Gauge students’ understanding of core concepts from pre-requisite courses by conducting individual interviews with students at the start of the semester / term.

Problem

Courses with pre-requisites assume that students entering the course with those pre-requisites have a certain baseline of knowlege about foundational concepts, and/or are proficient in a particular set of skills. This assumption may be inaccurate for several reasons, including:

Students may not have recently completed the pre-requisite course(s) and may have forgotten some of the course content or concepts.
Traditional grading schemes may obscure the level of competency achieved by a student on core concepts from a pre-requisite course. For instance, students may have achieved partial mastery of most or all of the course concepts, rather than mastery of a certain number of core concepts. Or, the structure of course assessments may have encouraged students to “learn for the test” and not retain core knowledge from the course.

Solution

Conduct pre-course 1-1 interviews with students. The purpose of these short, 1-1 interviews is to assess student understanding of prerequisite knowledge at the start of the course. These interviews allow the instructor to pitch the course concepts at a level appropriate to the students in the course.

Applicability

This play is particularly applicable to courses that rely heavily on content from previous courses (e.g. CS 2 relies heavily on mastery of content from CS 1).

This play can also be used in situations where pre-requisites can be satisfied by more than one course, to determine whether there are key differences in conceptual knowledge between students who took different paths into the course.

How to Implement

Set aside time in the beginning of the semester to conduct these interviews. Students can sign up for specific timeslots, visit office hours during particular times, etc.
Prepare the list of questions on a handout for students. Not every student processes auditory information well, so seeing the questions in front of them can help students feel more comfortable.
Provide scratch paper (or a whiteboard) for students who feel more comfortable sketching out their thoughts before articulating them orally.
Recognize that some students will feel anxious about this type of interaction. Clearly describing how the interview will be conducted may help to alleviate student anxiety.
Be prepared to modify questions on the fly. For instance, if a student appears to struggle with a particular concept (e.g. “In what situation might you use a deque?”), ask a simpler definition-style question instead (e.g. “What is a deque?”).

Source

Source: Fine, Benjamin T. 2024. Competency and Equity Driven Grading System for Computer Science Curriculum. In Proceedings of the 2024 Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1 (ITiCSE 2024), July 8–10, 2024, Milan, Italy. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3649217.3653564

Described by: Amy Csizmar Dalal (adalal@carleton.edu)

Community Discussion

Community members are free to comment on, ask questions about, share experiences, or otherwise contribute to knowledge about this play by posting comments below. See Chapter 33. Join Our Discussions for details.

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