Student Assessment and Evaluation in Engineering Education: Theory and Practice (original) (raw)

Assessment and Evaluation Practices in Engineering Education: A Global Perspective

2018 3rd International Conference of the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education (CISPEE), 2018

'Assessment' and 'evaluation' are the integral parts of the engineering curriculum. These components have direct relevance to quality assurance in engineering education. Literature suggests that better assessment and evaluation practices require certain knowledge and skills about types and methods of assessment and evaluation. It is found that most of the engineering faculty members do not have concrete knowledge about 'assessment' and 'evaluation' types and methods. Further, it is argued that engineering educators are not well aware of 'feedback comments' that are associated with assessment practices. Comments on students' performances are essential because it helps them to know their strengths and weaknesses of a course. In this background, the paper critically analyses assessment and evaluation practices in engineering education setup across the globe. In particular, it discusses the challenges faced by engineering faculty members while assessing students' performances. Finally, the paper offers suggestions to improve assessment and evaluation practices so that students doing engineering programs will be largely benefited.

Learning through Assessment and Feedback Practices: A Critical Review of Engineering Education Settings

EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2020

'Assessment' and 'feedback' are inherently embedded in a course curriculum of engineering education settings. These components are indispensable for the teaching-learning processes. It is observed that engineering faculty members do not require any 'teacher-training' to join the engineering institutions across the globe. Hence, they may not have adequate experience in assessing students' performances and providing feedback to students. Only a few research studies have been carried out on assessment and feedback from the engineering education context. Therefore, this paper attempts to critically analyse the literature pertaining to learning through different types and methods of assessment practices in the engineering education settings. Further, it examines the significance of qualitative feedback in assessment and the principles of good feedback practice. It highlights the implications of assessing student performance and providing feedback from the engineering education perspective. Finally, the paper offers some recommendations on assessment and feedback practices in the engineering education settings.

Assessment as learning: A rethink of assessment in engineering education

2016

Context: As universities embrace 21st century pedagogies of flipped, hybrid, blended, online and student-led practices, assessment seems to lag. It remains separated from teaching and learning, and consumes a great deal of academic time and energy. Despite innovations in assessment in other sectors of education, engineering education has only relatively recently engaged with authentic and alternative assessment practices and has perhaps confined these to project-based or capstone experiences. End-point, high stakes exams, grades and marks continue to dominate assessment practices with resultant high academic workload and student behaviour skewed towards attainment of marks rather than learning. The prominent place assessment plays in academic work prompted us to wonder: to what extent have we got it right? What could we be doing better? Purpose: Our small scale study explored what a group of academics who were committed to and recognised as leaders in quality teaching, thought about...

Teaching evaluation practices in engineering programs: current approaches and usefulness

2017

The evaluation of teaching is a critical aspect in higher education. There is substantial knowledge based on best teachingevaluation practices that can be used, yet there is a lack of research regarding teaching evaluation practices that are usedspecifically in engineering programs. This research characterized teaching evaluation practices within engineeringprograms across the country, to understand and assess the current state of practice. Three research questions wereexplored: (1) What teaching evaluation practices are used in engineering programs? (2) Which practices are used forformative and/or summative purposes? (3) What practices do engineering faculty report as useful? An exploratorysequential mixed-method design, utilizing interview and survey methods was used. In the qualitative phase, data werecollected using semi-structured interviews followed by the quantitative phase, which included the development of a surveyto more fully understand the evaluation practices of the int...

Student self-assessment in upper level engineering courses

1998

Faculty cannot ensure that educational program objectives and course learning objectives are being met unless both students and faculty become involved in the process of assessment and evaluation. In two senior-level courses, we are addressing these issues through course learning models that directly involve students via reflection, discussion, empowerment, and ownership in the course. The relevance of the learning model to real-life, industrial experiences is underscored as well. Our approach includes a student journal, an engineering workbook, a self-assessment report, and a student management team, as well as periodic surveys throughout the semester. These various instruments form a set of selfassessment tools that provide documentation related to the following issues. Do students have the correct background and preparation for the course? Do students understand the course learning objectives? Are students fulfilling these learning objectives? Are there ways to improve the course during the current semester? Are there ways to improve the course in future semesters?

Assessment: A tool to improve the quality in the Engineering education process

The Engineering School of the Universidad del Norte, which is formed by Civil, Electrical, Electronic, Industrial, Mechanical and Systems Engineering, is working on an assessment project in order to improve the quality of engineering education. The assessment project was initiated during the second semester of 2005 by some professors of the School of Engineering. This year all of the engineering faculty will apply a customized model which will collect information about the assessment that each professor applies in his/her class. This model will be utilized in all engineering courses. It uses a computational tool in order to collect and process information about the level and sequence of student learning. This process will help the faculty to measure the level of achievement of students with regard to the learning objectives in each course. These results will allow the faculty to identify weaknesses in the learning process of the students during the semester and take corrective measures.

Integrated and Effective Assessment Tool to Evaluate Engineering Courses

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings

The civil engineering program at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne was established in the fall of 2006. The program went through ABET accreditation in 2011 and was granted accreditation in August 2012. A key component of getting accreditation is the development and the implementation of an effective and continuous assessment based process to identifying strengths and weaknesses and to ensure continuous program improvements. The goal of this paper is to present an integrated assessment tool to assess course outcomes based on direct and indirect assessment measures. The tool was developed to establish consistency in the course assessment process, improve efficiency, create a better documentation process, and measures the effectiveness of educational and learning of engineering courses. The tool was developed using Excel and report the faculty and student assessments of a course. The tool is flexible and save faculty time when assessing their courses. It provides faculty with a choice to feed raw data or enter students' final assessment data in the sheet. In addition, it gives faculty a choice to use suitable criteria and assessment tools that are appropriate to the assessment of their courses. The paper presents the old system of assessment and the need to depart to a new more efficient system; a detailed description of the tool with real examples, and the impact of the new tool in supporting ABET accreditation of the Civil Engineering program as well other programs in the department are presented.

Differentiating assessment from evaluation as continuous improvement tools [for engineering education]

31st Annual Frontiers in Education Conference. Impact on Engineering and Science Education. Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.01CH37193), 2001

⎯ Unleashing the potential of continuous improvement in teaching/learning requires an appreciation of the difference in spirit between assessment and evaluation. Assessment is frequently confused and confounded with evaluation. The purpose of an evaluation is to judge the quality of a performance or work product against a standard. The fundamental nature of assessment is that a mentor values helping a mentee and is willing to expend the effort to provide quality feedback that will enhance the mentee's future performance. While both processes involve collecting data about a performance or work product, what is done with these data in each process is substantially different and invokes a very different mindset. This paper reviews the principles and mindset underlying quality assessment and then illustrates how feedback can be enhanced within the framework of structured assessment reports.

SELF – ASSESSMENT PRACTICES AMONGST ENGINEERING STUDENTS: THEIR EVALUATION AND FEEDBACK

Proceeding of the Global Conference On Language Practice & Information Technology 2014 (GLIT2014), 2014

ABSTRACT Uncovering to what extent students assess themselves accurately is imperative in understanding classroom assessments. This study seeks to investigate how accurate are UniKL’s Faculty of engineering students at assessing their own essays as well as finding out their feedback with regard to the use of selfassessment in their course. The main purpose of this study was to investigate and evaluate the implementation of self-assessment method as one of the assessment tools in assessing students. A total of 144 diploma students of various engineering courses participated in this study. Both content analysis and a survey were employed for data collection. The results showed that most students’ tend to under rate themselves and a handful would over rate themselves. However, it was also found out that the levels of discrepancy between lecturers’ and students’ ratings were not too extreme. Based on the feedback, the students also perceived the use self-assessment as a tool for evaluation as something positive and meaningful experience. Field of Research: Self-assessment, content analysis, students’ feedback.