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AP Computer Science Principles:�2020-21 CED Updates

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Welcome!

Crystal Furman

AP Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

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Joe Coglianese�HS Co-Chair, AP CSP

Troy, HS

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Agenda

AP Updates to 2020 CED

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Understanding the Course

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Assessing Student: Multiple Choice

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Questions

Assessing Student: Performance Task

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Understanding the Course

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Why is CS important?

  • What career fields require the use of computer science or computational thinking skills?
  • Why is this course important to your students, your school, or your community?
  • What concerns do you have, if any, about the race and gender disparity in computer science?

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“Prior to taking AP CSP, I thought computer science would be boring, was ‘for boys,’ was weird, full of just video games, and definitely would not be a part of my future if I had a choice. I ultimately chose to take AP CSP and AP CSA because it would allow me to not have to take any computer science in college.

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A year later, I have transformed into a completely different person who is interested in pursuing computer science in college, and I was inspired to create a computer science club for middle school girls in my community.

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This AP class has honestly changed my life. Thank you.”

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– Katherine C., Rising Senior

Kennesaw Mountain HS Student, Kennesaw, GA

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AP Updates to 2020 CED

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2020 AP CSP Exam Overview

  • The AP Computer Science Principles Exam assess student understanding of the computational thinking practices: skills and learning objectives outlined in the CED

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  • The end-of course AP exam is 120 minutes in length

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  • Teachers must allow 12 hours of class for students to complete the Create Performance Task.

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  • Scoring guidelines for the Create task can be found on the exam page of AP Central

CSP�CED

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Changes to Assessment

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Changes to the assessment are based on reading results and feedback from both HS and HE faculty.

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2020 CED

Prior to 2020 CED

70 Multiple choice questions

  • Single select and multiple select questions
  • 1 sets of 5 questions with a reading passage about a computing innovation

74 multiple choice questions

  • Single select and multiple select questions

Explore Curricular Requirement

  • Students will be required to investigate 3 computing innovations of their choosing and answer similar questions.

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Explore Performance Task

  • Students investigate a computing innovation, create a computing artifact, and answer a series of prompts related to the data used in the computing innovation and its effects.

Create Performance Task

  • Students collaborate in the creation of a computer program.
  • Students will be required to use lists and procedures that include parameters in writing their programs.
  • Students will answer questions about their program development, use of algorithms and abstraction, as well as test cases to round out the iterative development process.

Create Performance Task

  • Students collaborate in the creation of a computer program.
  • Students answer questions about the development of their program as well as about algorithms and abstraction used in its creation.

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Course Skills

What computer scientists do

  • Course skills describe what students should be able to do while exploring course concepts. In the AP Computer Science courses, these are called Computational Thinking Practices: Skills.
  • Course skills also form the basis of tasks students are asked to perform on the AP Exam.
  • Students will benefit from multiple opportunities to develop course skills in a scaffolded manner.
  • In Practice 2, 3, and 4 the skills are more scaffolded. Consider how this affects the development of units.

CSP�CED

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Changes to Computational Thinking Practices

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Computational Thinking Practices have been redefined to include course skills.

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Emphasis will be placed on creativity and collaboration as pedagogical strategies to be used to develop a diverse, appealing and inclusive classroom environment.

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2020 CED

Computational Thinking Practices

Prior to 2020 CED

Computational Thinking Practices

Practice 1 - Computational Solution Design: Design and evaluate computational solutions for a purpose

Creating Computational Artifacts

Practice 2 - Algorithms and Program Development: Develop and implement algorithms

Practice 3 - Abstraction in Program Development: Develop programs that incorporate abstractions.

Abstracting

Practice 4 - Code Analysis: Evaluate and test algorithms and programs

Analyzing Problems and Artifacts

Practice 5 - Computing Innovations: Investigate computing innovations

Connecting Computing

Practice 6 - Responsible Computing: Contribute to an inclusive, safe, collaborative, and ethical computing culture

Collaborating; Communicating

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Big Ideas in AP Computer Science Principles

  • Overarching concepts or themes that are run across the entire year, rather than units of instruction.
  • Within each big idea are topics.
  • Teachers and AP endorsed providers can group topics together to create units or modules.

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Changes to the Big Ideas

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AP CSP remains programming language agnostic - meaning teachers will choose the programming languages for their class.

The Exam Reference Sheet contains both block-based and text-based programming code.

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2020 CED Big Ideas

Prior to 2020 CED

BI 1: Creative Development

BI 1: Creativity

Integrated throughout

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BI 2: Abstraction

BI 2: Data

BI 3: Data and Information

BI 3: Algorithms and Programming

BI 4: Algorithms

BI 5: Programming

BI 4: Computer Systems and Networks

BI 6: The Internet

BI 5: Impact of Computing;

BI 7: Global Impact

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Assessing Students:

Multiple Choice

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2020 AP CSP Exam Overview

  • 70 multiple choice questions

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  • 3 types of questions

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  • Each question has 4 answer choices

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  • Single-select - choose 1 of 4;�Multi-select - choose 2 of 4.

CSP�CED

p. 163

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Question Types: Section I

Single-Select with Reading Passage�

  • All reading passage questions will be worded similarly. Text in italic is specific to the reading passage and will vary.

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  • The set of five questions assesses Computational Thinking Practices 3 and 5.

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  • Practice 3 questions are related to the use of data, such as:
    • Which of the following data is not provided directly from the user but is necessary for the upgraded system to operate as described?

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  • Practice 5 questions are related to the impact of the computing innovation and privacy, security, or storage concerns, such as:
    • Of the following potential benefits, which is LEAST likely to be provided by the upgraded system?
    • Which of the following is the most likely data privacy concern of the upgraded system?

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CSP �CED

p. 166 & 167

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Join Poll Everywhere

  1. Via the web: PollEv.com/crystalfurma865
  2. Via text message: Text CRYSTALFURMA865 to 22333

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Skills Required in Multiple-Choice

  • Turn to question 8 in the sample multiple-choice question in the Exam Information section of the AP Computer Science Principles Course and Exam Description, on page 175.
  • What skill is being assessed?

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8. A list of numbers has n elements, indexed from 1 to n. The following algorithm is intended to display the number of elements in the list that have a value greater than 100. The algorithm uses the variables count and position. Step 3 and 4 are missing.

Step 1: Set count to 0 and position to 1.

Step 2: If the value of the element at index position is greater than 100,

increase the value of count by 1.

Step 3: (missing step)

Step 4: (missing step)

Step 5: Display the value of count.

Which of the following could be used to replace step 3 and 4 so that the algorithm works as intended?

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Skills Required in Multiple-Choice

  • Turn to question 3 in the sample multiple-choice question in the Exam Information section of the AP Computer Science Principles Course and Exam Description, on page 173.
  • What skill is being assessed?

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3. The following grid contains a robot represented as a triangle. The robot is initially facing right.

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Which of the following code segments can be used to move the robot to the gray square along the path indicated by the arrows?

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Skills Required in Multiple-Choice

  • Turn to question 2 in the sample multiple-choice question in the Exam Information section of the AP Computer Science Principles Course and Exam Description, on page 172.
  • What skill is being assessed?

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2. Each student that enrolls at a school is assigned a unique ID number, which is stored as a binary number. The ID numbers increase sequentially by 1 with each newly enrolled student. If the ID number assigned to the last student who enrolled was the binary number 1001 0011, what binary number will be assigned to the next student who enrolls?

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Skills Required in Multiple-Choice

  • Turn to question 6 in the sample multiple-choice question in the Exam Information section of the AP Computer Science Principles Course and Exam Description, on page 174.
  • What skill is being assessed?

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Skills Required in Multiple-Choice

  • Turn to question 9 in the sample multiple-choice question in the Exam Information section of the AP Computer Science Principles Course and Exam Description, on page 176.
  • What skill is being assessed?

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Skills Required in Multiple-Choice

  • Turn to question 10 in the sample multiple-choice question in the Exam Information section of the AP Computer Science Principles Course and Exam Description, on page 176.
  • What skill is being assessed?

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10. A digital photo file contains data representing the level of red, green, and blue for each pixel in the photo. The file also contains metadata that describe the data and geographic location where the photo was taken. For which of the following goals would analyzing the metadata be more appropriate than analyzing the data?

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Assessing Students:

Performance Task

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Student Progress and Understanding of PT

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Preparing Your Students for the Create Performance Task:

How will you prepare students for the more challenging aspects of the Create Performance task?

Add your strategies here: https://tinyurl.com/CSTA2020CreatePT

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Create Performance Task Scoring Guidelines

NOTES

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  • There are six rows (0-1 point):
    • Program Purpose and Function
    • Data Abstraction
    • Managing Complexity
    • Procedural Abstraction
    • Algorithm Implementation
    • Testing�
  • Except where otherwise noted, each point of the rubric is earned independently. For instance, a student could earn a point for Algorithm Implementation without earning the point for Procedural Abstraction.
  • Responses should be evaluated on the rationale provided not on the interpretation or inference on the part of the scorer.
  • Terms and phrases defined in the terminology list are italicized when they first appear in the scoring criteria. You will find the terminology list on the last page. �

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2021: Pilot Sample Student Response�

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Create Performance Task Scoring Guidelines cont.

  • The following are found in the terminology:
    • Input
    • Program Functionality
    • Output
    • Purpose

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Sample A

  • Walk through the scoring of a sample with the participants. We are walking through Sample A.
  • Watch the video.�

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Sample A

  • Read through the response for 3a�

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Create Performance Task Scoring Guidelines cont.

  • The following are found in the terminology:
    • Program Code Segment
    • List
    • Data has been stored in this list
    • Collection Type
    • List being used

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Sample A

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Sample A

  • Read through the response for 3b. �

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Create Performance Task Scoring Guidelines cont.

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Sample A

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Sample A

  • Read through the response for 3b. �

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Create Performance Task Scoring Guidelines cont.

  • The following are found in the terminology:
    • Student-developed Procedure / Algorithm
    • Procedure
    • Parameter
    • Arguments

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Sample A

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Sample A

  • Read through the response for 3c. �

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Create Performance Task Scoring Guidelines cont.

  • The following are found in the terminology:
    • Sequencing
    • Selection
    • Iteration

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Sample A

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Sample A

  • Read through the response for 3c. �

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Create Performance Task Scoring Guidelines cont.

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Sample A

  • Read through the response for 3d. �

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More questions?

Web: collegeboard.org/APCSP

Email: APCSP@info.collegeboard.org

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Thank you!

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Additional College Board Sessions:

Growing an AP CS Pathway using Providers: July 14th - 9:15am CT

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