Programming Competency Decline Due to Assessment Design Focusing on Final Output

This cause is confirmed when course assessment rubrics prioritize the functional correctness of the final code block over the development process. To diagnose this, review the assessment criteria: if the grading weight is concentrated solely on whether the code executes correctly, rather than on documentation of the process, pseudocode drafts, or iterative problem-solving steps, it is confirmed that the assessment design incentivizes students to bypass productive struggle by utilizing AI for instant final output generation.

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