Practice Exams and Student Performance in Introductory Programming

Introductory Computer Science courses are often challenging, and students who do not consistently practice the material tend to struggle the most. Weekly exams are an excellent strategy to make students review and practice the course material frequently and consistently. Providing practice exams a few days in advance is a way to help students better prepare and succeed in weekly tests. In this study, we looked at three aspects of how practice exams could correlate with students' performance in actual tests. First, we compared the performance of students who attempted the practice exams with those who did not. Second, we looked at how early students started the practice exam with respect to the date of the actual exam. Third, we calculated the total amount of time spent on each practice exam. Our preliminary results indicate superior performance of students who attempted the practice exams; no effect of practice start time; and a detectable but weak negative correlation between practice duration and exam performance.