Effect of Conceptual Cue Based (CCB) Practical Exam Evaluation of Learning and Evaluation Approaches: A Case for Use in Process-Based Pedagogy

For Master of Computer Applications (MCA) course, number of colleges has grown drastically in terms of numbers and intake in past few years in India. An availability of qualified and motivated teachers and trainers is a common problem in most Indian MCA colleges. Additionally, a vast majority of the available teachers does not have any formal training in teaching (like B.Ed.), ultimately resulting in poor quality of teaching and the quality of examinations (paper and evaluation). Various workshops have been arranged to enhance teaching skills covering topics like designing lesson plans, incorporating Learner Styles, Bloom's taxonomy, Rubric design and Active teaching techniques etc. However, there is very little concern for evaluation of practical exams where wide variety of technologies is involved. The purpose of this paper is to consider the change in learning (understanding) approaches of a learner and reduce the randomness found in practical paper preparation and evaluation for programming languages. In this study, Rubrics (templates) are designed, implemented and used for practical question set and the faculty members were trained for evaluation using the same templates. These paper sets were used for External university examination of post graduate students (specially MCA). Questionnaire was prepared to get students and faculty feedback. It was observed that students evaluated with practical questions prepared using CCB showed better understanding, concept visualization and enhanced analytical ability of students. It also reduced randomness in the evaluation process. Our observations indicate that students' skill levels improved significantly.