Developing a validated assessment of fundamental CS1 concepts

Previous studies of student programming ability have raised questions about students' ability to problem solve, read and analyze code, and understand introductory computing concepts. However, it is unclear whether these results are the product of failures of student comprehension or our inability to accurately measure their performance. We propose a method for creating a language independent CS1 assessment instrument and present the results of our analysis used to define the common conceptual content that will serve as the framework for the exam. We conclude with a discussion of future work and our progress towards developing the assessment.