Flipping the Final: Individualized Learning through a Teaching-Based Assessment
Publication Date
6-13-2025
Document Type
Conference Poster
Description
Traditional final exams in introductory computer science courses often rely on one-size-fits-all testing, which may not support individual learning needs. Research on mastery learning suggests that students learn more effectively when focusing on weak areas and actively constructing knowledge. This poster presents a teaching-based final exam that promotes individualized learning. Students are assigned a challenging topic related to their weaknesses and tasked with preparing a mini-lecture, designing a quiz, and creating an exam-level problem with a rubric. This final exam shifts assessment from passive recall to active learning by requiring students to reconstruct knowledge and engage in peer instruction, reinforcing conceptual understanding. Subjective feedback on engagement, confidence, and perceived learning outcomes suggests that students found this approach more effective and engaging than traditional exams. This poster describes the design of this teaching-based assessment, shares student reflections, and discusses the implications and limitations of individualized learning in computer science education.
Source Publication
https://doi.org/10.1145/3724389.3730798
Department
Computer Science
Recommended Citation
Sing Chun Lee. 2025. Flipping the Final: Individualized Learning through a Teaching-Based Assessment. In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 2 (ITiCSE 2025). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 767. https://doi.org/10.1145/3724389.3730798