Thank you, code.org, for changing questions 5 and 10 on the assessment. Question 5 took out the requirement for a student to know how to convert to Hex. Question 10 is rewritten in a context of an activity the students worked with in Unit 1.
I still have concerns about two questions on the test.
Question 4 still references Hex and up to this point in the lessons, there is no solid practice with the Hex numbering system. I know at some point we will cover Hex in more detail, just not up to this point in the curriculum.
Question 7 on bandwidth and latency. The only place this is presented in the curriculum is as vocabulary words. Even in the teacher notes it is not stressed. I had to throw out Question 7 last year and I threw it out again this year.
Thank for a great curriculum and for giving teachers that have their “boots on the ground” the opportunity to share our experience!
I am also happy for the changes to this assessment.
I think students who have completed lessons 4 - 7 develop a basic understanding of bases and why computers use binary. I think the introductory statement could throw students who have not seen data represented in octal or hexadecimal. It is a statement of fact not connected to their experience. The question itself can be answered whether or not you understand or believe the statement.
Question #7 provides another challenge. I think I will take some time to dig deeper into these terms and how to connect students to them. Last year, I had conversations about the difference with traffic in the hallways from our old building to our new one.
I see this as an opportunity to discuss the AP style questions and how they are require more than knowing definitions.
I also had concerns about the question on bandwidth and latency given the fact that these things are not covered in detail in the lessons. I am wondering if students can expect to see this type of question on the AP exam. If so, rather than just throwing out the question, the lessons should be modified so that students are are better informed about these ideas.
I agree… I would like to see the lessons modified to include latency and bandwidth. In the meantime, here is a great explanation of the difference between latency and bandwidth…
Question for this board: What are some best practices for helping students deal with the AP style test questions? How can we support students to use vocabulary in context?
I agree on Question #7. The correct answer isn’t really covered in depth in the the curriculum. I did not grade that question for my classes, the students were allowed to answer it and we discussed it after the test.
Most of the students were confused with the question and used elimination to get rid of all the wrong answers, but no one really knew why the correct answer was the best
On the Unit 1 Chapter 1 assessment, question 7 asks which of the four statements is true about the way data is transmitted on the Internet. Option D is marked as the correct answer. Option D says, Two devices must communicate using the same bit-rate to successfully send and receive digital data.
Students said with the simulator, they could have different bit rates on either side of a connection and the “data” was transmitted just fine. Thus, they believed that option was false also.
I would not count it as a successful sending and receiving if the bit rates are different since the message received would be interpreted differently from what was sent. This goes back to the Check your understanding question in Lesson 3, level 4 (https://studio.code.org/s/csp1-2018/stage/3/puzzle/4?section_id=1618548).
Where they able to be successful because they accounted for the different rates (eg one person sends a message at the top of 2 seconds, while the other person reads every other 1 second)?
When the sender and receiver have all the same settings, except different bit rates, the message does get sent through successfully (at least it does when I try it). I believe I also noticed this the last time my students tried it.
I agree this should not be the case (as in, in real life the message doesn’t arrive intact if the sender/receiver use different bitrates), and I can see why your students would argue their case since it seems it’s supported by the net sim’s behavior.
I’ll ping the code.org staff about this issue and see if it’s indeed a bug or if there’s something we’re all missing.
We are aware that the Internet Simulator does not model the correct behavior - devices do need to communicate using the same bit-rate. We have tagged this question for an update for the 2019 version of the curriculum. Thank you for bubbling this up to the team!