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The year in review: changes and lessons learned in the design and implementation of the AP CS exam in Java

Published: 23 February 2005 Publication History

Abstract

The 2004 school year marked significant changes in the Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science curriculum. Most visibly, Java replaced C++ as the exam-testable programming language. More fundamentally, however, the AP CS curriculum now places a greater emphasis on object-oriented design than in previous years. Students are expected to be able to implement interfaces, design and implement class hierarchies using inheritance, analyze the tradeoffs between alternative designs and their associated efficiencies, and make use of Java Collection classes where appropriate. This special session is intended to inform both high school and college teachers as to the extent of these changes and how they affected the development and grading of the 2004 AP CS exams. In addition, it will provide practical insights as to how the new curriculum can be taught in high schools, and how teachers can better prepare their students for the exams.The AP CS Development Committee's charge is not only to provide a comprehensive testing mechanism, but also to recommend a direction that high school teachers should take in preparing a foundation for more advanced student studies during college. This special session will bring together two college and two high school members of the AP CS Development Committee to share some of their insights into the AP program.AP teachers will learn valuable information to continue to support their shift to Java in the classroom and about the exam for which they are preparing their students. College teachers will learn more about the AP CS curriculum and test development process, which may aid them in similar course redesigns and in the placement of students with AP credit.Time will be provided to discuss participant's questions.

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 37, Issue 1
2005
562 pages
ISSN:0097-8418
DOI:10.1145/1047124
Issue’s Table of Contents
  • cover image ACM Conferences
    SIGCSE '05: Proceedings of the 36th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
    February 2005
    610 pages
    ISBN:1581139977
    DOI:10.1145/1047344
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 23 February 2005
Published in SIGCSE Volume 37, Issue 1

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Author Tags

  1. AP
  2. AP CS
  3. AP CS development committee
  4. Java
  5. Java exam
  6. advanced placement computer science
  7. collection classes
  8. high school teachers
  9. inheritance
  10. interfaces
  11. marine biology simulation case study
  12. object-oriented design

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