Student final grading method for informatics and computer architecture

Abstract

To achieve the requirements of modern education standards not only the lecture and practice delivering process must be updated, but the final grading method is to be improved as well. The common practice during an examination is to ask a student to provide a smooth oral exposition of one or more relatively large pieces of content, covering some of the course topics. In this case, it is difficult to provide a totally objective and unbiased evaluation of student's knowledge. Actually, this problem is solved now individually be each lecturer using his professional skills and experience to pose additional questions involving a student into a topic-oriented discussion, thus making a judgement about the student's knowledge and competency level. At first sight, the list of course textbook questions and exercises may be applicable for the purpose of final examination, but this immediate solution is not appropriate, because each textbook question is aimed to stimulate students to read and realize carefully a certain part of text; therefore, answering textbook questions does not basically reveal the entire student competency. Being specially adopted for examination needs the textbook questions can be a powerful means of student competency check. A method to create series of brief discriminative questions on particular pieces of the course content is proposed to make the final grading of students clear and objective. A number of annotated sample questions for informatics and computer architecture are provided.