Assessing students' practice of professional values

Abstract

This paper challenges the traditional approach to assessment in computing courses that restricts it to the cognitive domain and does not seek to measure attitudes and values. It identifies the role of professional values in the computing curriculum and presents examples of assessment related to some important professional characteristics. It then explores how assessment in the affective domain can help to improve our students' acquisition of professional values and constructive alignment between learning outcomes and assessment tasks. Finally, it considers the ethical issues raised by the assessment of values.