Code Interviews: Design and Evaluation of a More Authentic Assessment for Introductory Programming Assignments

Generative artificial intelligence poses new challenges around assessment, increasingly driving introductory programming educators to employ invigilated exams. But exams do not afford more authentic programming experiences that involve planning, implementing, and debugging programs with computer interaction. In this experience report, we describe code interviews: a more authentic assessment method for take-home programming assignments. Through action research, we experimented with the number and type of questions as well as whether interviews were conducted individually or with groups of students. To scale the program, we converted most of our weekly teaching assistant (TA) sections to conduct code interviews on 5 major weekly take-home programming assignments. By triangulating data from 5 sources, we identified 4 themes. Code interviews (1) pushed students to discuss their work, motivating more nuanced but sometimes repetitive insights; (2) enabled peer learning, reducing stress in some ways but increasing stress in other ways; (3) scaled with TA-led sections, replacing familiar practice with an unfamiliar assessment; (4) focused on student contributions, limiting opportunities for TAs to give guidance and feedback. We reflect on the design of code interviews for student experience, academic integrity, and teacher workload.