Thu 19 Feb 2026 16:20 - 16:40 at Meeting Room 105 - Student Behaviors and Reasoning Chair(s): Jelena Trajkovic

Assessments of student learning can take many forms, but for assessing learning at scale, a multiple-choice exam is often used. A multiple-choice question is often comprised of a stem, followed by a number of distractors and a correct option. All parts of a question need to be carefully designed to support assessment validity, but each part can also exhibit bias and negatively impact students in an inequitable way. In this research, we extend psychometric methods to explore the potential bias within the distractors on an introductory computing assessment for undergraduate students. We use Differential Distractor Functioning (DDF) on 259 student responses to identify problematic distractors. We discuss the distractors that were flagged in our analysis, which did vary in regard to biasing for male or female students. This work contributes a deeper understanding of the issues that can lie within an assessment, furthering our efforts to create fairer measures of learning for all students.

Thu 19 Feb

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15:40 - 17:00
Student Behaviors and ReasoningPapers at Meeting Room 105
Chair(s): Jelena Trajkovic California State University Long Beach
15:40
20m
Talk
Analogical Reasoning in Undergraduate Algorithms
Papers
Jonathan Liu University of Chicago, Erica Goodwin University of Chicago, Diana Franklin University of Chicago
16:00
20m
Talk
Choosing Their Own Way: Guided Self-Placement for Students in an Introductory Programming Sequence
Papers
Brett Wortzman pc, Melissa Chen Northwestern University, Miya Natsuhara University of Washington, Seattle, Eleanor O'Rourke Northwestern University
16:20
20m
Talk
Investigating Answer Choice Bias within a College-Level Introductory Computing Assessment
Papers
Miranda Parker University of North Carolina Charlotte, Sin Yu Ciou University of Washington, Yale Quan University of Washington, He Ren University of Washington, Chun Wang University of Washington, Min Li University of Washington
16:40
20m
Talk
Performance and Start-Time Trends in Asynchronous Computer-Based AssessmentsGlobal
Papers
Iris Xu University of British Columbia, Romina Mahinpei Princeton University, Steve Wolfman University of British Columbia, Firas Moosvi University of British Columbia Okanagan