Unifying Assessment Of Freshman Design Teams With Team Project Management

This paper discusses efforts to unify the assessment of first-year engineering design project teams with the project management skills and techniques employed by the teams. Assessment of the performance of individual design project team members is always a difficult task- especially in large classes such as Introduction to Mechanical Engineering. Project management is also a difficult challenge for both the instructors and the studentsagain even more so since we are dealing with first-year students. This paper presents a methodology for addressing both of these challenges in one cohesive project management effort. The result has been increased team productivity, a better experience for the students, increased student retention, and valuable data for the instructor that enables the assessment of the performance of individual team members within the context of large engineering design project teams.