Evaluating assessments of novice programming environments

Abstract

Educators have developed a myriad of tools to help novices learn to program. Unfortunately, too little is known about the educational impact of these environments, or even how to assess this impact. In this paper we summarize a representative collection of the assessments of novice programming environments, present a rubric for evaluating the quality of such assessments, and demonstrate the application of our rubric to the summarized works. The intent is that such an evaluative framework will help inform future efforts in assessing novice programming environments.