Assessment Of An Introduction To Engineering And Problem Solving Course

At North Carolina State University, the freshmen’s first course in engineering is E101, Introduction to Engineering and Problem-Solving. It is offered each fall to over 1,100 first year engineering students. In an effort to continuously improve the course, we put into place a plan to assess the course's learning outcomes. Assessment data collected in fall 2001 and fall 2002 through surveys, rubrics, and class assignments were evaluated to determine how well students met learning outcomes related to communication, teamwork, and problem-solving. This paper presents the assessment methods used in this course and provides examples of how the assessment findings were used to modify the course. The assessment procedures developed for this course can be modified for use in any course, regardless of its size, and will illustrate how course assessment can be used to make course and program improvements. Model for Assessment Last year, we presented a model for assessment that describes what data to gather, where to obtain the data, what criteria may be most appropriate when interpreting the data, how to use the results to make improvements in program and how to document the process.1 The present paper illustrates how that model can be implemented to assess the E10