Crib sheets and exam performance in a data structures course. Issue 1 (2nd January 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hamouda, Sally; Shaffer, Clifford A.
• Is Part Of: Computer science education. Volume 26:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 26
• Publication Date: 2016-01-02
• Subjects: Crib sheets -- cheat sheets -- exam performance -- data structures and algorithms; Computer science -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 004
• DOI: 10.1080/08993408.2016.1140427
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0899-3408

Abstract

Abstract : In this paper, we study the relationship between the use of "crib sheets" or "cheat sheets" and performance on in-class exams. Our extensive survey of the existing literature shows that it is not decisive on the questions of when or whether crib sheets actually help students to either perform better on an exam or better learn the material. We report on our own detailed analysis for a body of crib sheets created for the final exam in a junior-level Data Structures and Algorithms course. We wanted to determine whether there is any feature of the crib sheets that correlates to good exam scores. Exam performance was compared against a number of potential indicators for quality in a crib sheet. We have found that students performed significantly better on questions at the comprehension level of Bloom's taxonomy when their crib sheet contained good information on the topic, while performance on questions at higher levels of the taxonomy did not show correlation to crib sheet contents. We have also seen that students at certain levels of performance on the final exam (specifically, medium-to-high performance) did relatively better on certain questions than other students at that performance level when they had good coverage of that question's topic on their crib sheet.