Assessment of modeling and simulation in secondary computing science education

The introduction of the new computing science curriculum in the Netherlands in 2019 raises the need for new evidence-based teaching materials that include practical assignments and guidelines for their assessment. As a part of our research project on teaching Computational Science (modeling and simulation), we participate in these efforts and developed a curriculum intervention including a practical assignment and an accompanying assessment instrument consisting of grading rubrics based on the SOLO taxonomy. In this research paper we focus on the assessment instrument. We describe its development and report on a pilot study carried out in the secondary computing science course implementing the curriculum intervention. The instrument proved to be reliable and effective in tracing high and low levels of the students' achievements in modeling and simulation projects and exposed the expected differences in performance levels of various groups of students, which renders it useful for both formative and summative assessment. Furthermore, our application of the instrument has provided new insights into the needs of specific groups of students to receive instruction prior to and during the work on the assignments.