Systematic Integration Of Concept Inventories In Mechanical Engineering

Gauging student knowledge accurately is a complex task that has always challenged educators. The commonly employed metrics (homework, quizzes and exams) serve as indicators of student performance for instructors — yet are these instruments truly assessing student knowledge gains? Concept inventories have recently emerged as tools for assessing students’ understanding of the basic concepts upon which technical education is based. Initially developed to test learning of basic physics concepts, concept inventories have subsequently been developed and validated for a variety of engineering subjects. By undergoing a rigorous process of validation, engineering concept inventories can provide meaningful primary assessment throughout a curriculum. This, in turn, allows a methodical evaluation of the effectiveness of various teaching methods, enabling subsequent improvements in learning. However, concept inventories have not been applied in a systematic way to engineering curricula. This paper focuses on the systematic integration of eight previously developed and disparate concept inventories, utilized to assess the major portion of a mechanical engineering undergraduate curriculum. We present the preliminary results, and discuss the forthcoming efforts to develop and validate two additional concept inventories that will provide a full assessment package for the core mechanical engineering undergraduate curriculum.