2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Written exams are regularly used to assess students’ skills in problem-solving in engineering and computer science courses. Written solutions document students’ thought processes, but there may be other thinking and reasoning that the instructor cannot observe from a solution alone. The pedagogical technique reported in this paper is the use of video reflections of solutions to exam problems. Students created one short video explanation of their solution to a randomly assigned exam problem for each exam. The educational objectives for the video included: 1) encourage reflection and meta-cognition about the creation and testing of a solution, 2) practice oral communication of technical process.

From 2021 to 2023, students in three different computer science courses took exams and created video recordings of their solutions. The exam problems involved writing short code snippets, applying algorithms, applying networking protocols, generating state diagrams, and writing proofs. The instructor watched the video reflections to gain insight into the solution-generation and solution-testing process of their students in addition to assessing students’ work. The instructor awarded the maximum grade of the written solution and the video reflection solution; therefore, students could improve their solution on the video and earn a better grade.

Students completed an optional end-of-semester survey about all assessment practices in the courses, including the exams and video reflections. The survey data was analyzed to evaluate if exam reflection videos were perceived as supportive to students’ learning and accurate demonstrations of understanding. Students appreciated the opportunity to explain solutions and steps more thoroughly, think more deeply without exam time pressure, fix errors, and make solutions more efficient. About one-third of students updated at least one solution by finding errors prior to or during the recording of their explanations. While oral communication was not explicitly graded, the instructor observed that students used the vocabulary of the discipline correctly. A few students thought the extra step of creating a video was cumbersome; however, the majority appreciated the opportunity for revision and explanation of their solutions. Written exams remain a common form of assessment of problem-solving skills in many engineering and computer science. Video creation posed more work and time for both students and instructors; however, there are educational benefits of requiring students to review and explain their work: it provides authentic engineering communication practice and seeds a habit of metacognition.