Assessing Student Work In An Introductory Design Class

Assessment of student work in an engineering design class can more subjective than most engineering students (and sometimes faculty) are comfortable with. Students, and faculty alike, may be more comfortable with a more quantitative grading scheme. Such an approach has been developed for use in an introductory design class in which the process of design is emphasized over the product of design. This paper presents the summarized versions of the assignments in the class offered in the fall of 2007 and completed by 68 students. Twenty-five per cent of the course grade was determined from team performances on a two-month long, design, fabricate and test project. Seventy per cent of the team project grade was based on quantifiable components such as test results and reporting requirements leaving only 30% of the project grade (or about 7% of the course grade) to be determined from a “subjective” evaluation of the artifact (but even this evaluation was guided by the publicized rubric). The remaining 75% of the grade was determine from individually completed assignments (nine homework assignments, two smaller projects and two closed book exams) which addressed various aspects of the design process. The grades were about one letter grade higher (3.37/4.0 compared to 2.47/4.0 or B+ compared to C+) for the team project compared to the individual work.