Skills Tests

Skills Tests are short, timed exams that will have students perform actual coding tasks using their laptop software development environments. A key aim of the Skills Tests is to evaluate whether students can perform core development tasks quickly and correctly. Such skill and efficiency is essential to being an effective software development team member.

The Rules

• No devices, except for your laptop.
• Paper notes are allowed. Having digital notes on your laptop is allowed.
• Closed neighbor.
• No texting/messaging/posting. Searching the web for documentation and existing forum posts is OK.

This is an exam, and violations of the rules will be treated as academic dishonesty.

Procedures

• You must video record your performance of the test in the same way that you record the explanation videos.
• The coding task to perform will be given to you at the start of the test session.
• You must complete the task and submit your code all within the allotted time.
• Additional time will be allocated for you to submit your video.
• Submit your code and video regardless of whether you succeeded in completing the task.

Preparing for the Test

In addition to practicing the material to be covered on the test (e.g., skills assignments), it is recommended that, prior to the test, you prepare a working directory as follows:

1. Clone this Skills Test Apps GitHub repository: https://github.com/memphis-cs/skills-test-apps-2021-08fall
2. cd into the working directory, and make sure that you’re on the main branch (should be the default).
3. Run bundle install to install the Gem dependencies.
4. Run yarn install to install the JS dependencies.
5. Run rails db:migrate:reset to initialize the database.

Performing these steps prior to the test will save you precious time during the test, so again, it is highly recommended that you do them.

Rubric

Skills Tests are graded as pass/fail. The following are several key reasons that a test might be graded as fail:

• Failure to complete the entire task.
• Errors are present in the code.
• The way the task was performed departs substantially from how it was taught in the course.