Developing And Using Rubrics To Evaluate Subjective Engineering Laboratory And Design Reports

In the past two years several faculty in Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Iowa State University have been utilizing rubrics to evaluate student work in laboratory courses as well as the engineering design course sequence. The laboratory course had primarily sophomores and the design course sequence were graduating seniors. Developing rubrics is not an easy task and requires iteration and patience. This paper will discuss how the rubrics were developed and refined. Observations and feedback from faculty and teaching assistants who are using the rubrics will be presented along with summative surveys data from the students. The faculty and teaching assistants uniformly appreciated the rubrics to ensure uniform grading and as a means to describe standards for completing assignments. The survey results from the students however show a difference between the group of primarily sophomores and the group of seniors who were graded using rubrics. The seniors were almost uniformly positive about the rubrics and even asked for rubrics while the sophomores were less satisfied with the rubrics. The results of the survey are presented and discussed along with changes that are being implemented to address student concerns.