Construction and Empirical Study of a Formative Assessment System for Programming Courses in Blended Teaching Model

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62517/jhet.202615232

Author(s)

Lei Zheng

Affiliation(s)

School of Information Science and Technology, Baotou Teachers’ College, Baotou, China

Abstract

Against the backdrop of New Engineering initiatives and digital transformation in education, blended teaching has become the mainstream model for programming courses in higher education. Traditional summative assessment-the 'one exam determines a lifetime' model-often fails to accurately diagnose students' higher-order programming abilities, such as solving complex engineering problems, and cannot support the development of students' practical skills. This has also led to the common shortcoming that students 'have a good grasp of basic knowledge but weak comprehensive application abilities.' To overcome this bottleneck, this study, based on the theory of formative assessment, has established a four-dimensional integrated evaluation system encompassing 'goal decomposition, variation exploration, layered testing, and data-driven feedback.' At the same time, we conducted a two-year comparative experiment in the course 'C Programming Language,' selecting the 2024 cohort and the 2025 cohort as the control group and the experimental group, respectively, to verify its practical effects in the teaching environment. By comparing and analyzing the course goal achievement, academic performance, and learning behavior data of the two groups of students, the experimental results demonstrate that this system has significant effectiveness in enhancing students' higher-order programming skills. The data show that the achievement of the course goal 'complex problem solving' in the experimental group reached 0.72, significantly higher than the control group's 0.62, an overall increase of 16.1%. On the other hand, the proportion of students who failed to achieve this goal dropped sharply from 44.4% to 16.2%. In addition, the final grade distribution of the experimental group was also significantly optimized, with students showing a marked increase in engagement, initiative, and effective use of feedback during the learning process. This study proves that this formative assessment system can be effectively integrated with blended teaching, practically addressing students' skill gaps and genuinely implementing the teaching principle of 'assessment for learning.' This not only provides a practical case for meeting the 'continuous improvement' requirements in engineering education accreditation, but also serves as an effective reference for teaching and assessment reforms in similar programming and engineering practice courses.

Keywords

Formative Assessment; Blended Teaching; Programming Course; Course Objective Attainment; Teaching Reform

References

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