Development of a Versatile Assessment for CS1

In this poster, we present an ongoing project to develop and validate a subscale-based introductory computer science (CS1) assessment for broad use in computer science education research. This project addresses the need for a validated, adaptable assessment of CS1 knowledge across diverse institutional contexts and programming languages. We build upon the existing Second CS1 (SCS1) assessment, a pseudocode-based assessment for undergraduate introductory computer science course. While SCS1 has been widely used, it lacks flexibility and subscale validation, limiting its suitability for varied course content and research needs. Our poster will present our initial work towards creating an enhanced version of SCS1, termed SCS1++. We report on our progress developing and piloting a broader range of questions with varying difficulty levels. We will also use the poster as an opportunity to recruit field test sites for testing and validating SCS1++ with a broad student population.