Examining student progress in portfolio assessed introductory programming

Constructive alignment has gained wide acceptance as a pedagogical approach that promotes deep learning, and portfolio assessment offers a natural means of achieving this. This work examines student's progress in an introductory programming unit that used portfolio assessment to implement constructive alignment. Charts visually showing student progress provided material for a thematic analysis. This paper categorizes these charts into several classes, and discusses insight this gives into the teaching and learning approach used. These results can be used to inform the development of constructively aligned units using this approach.