Development And Implementation Of A Course Level Assessment Plan

Course-level assessment in the spirit of continuous improvement is key to successful evaluation of an engineering program. The assessment process involves stating proper educational objectives and specific course outcomes, forming performance criteria and metrics, and assessing the achievement of the stated outcomes. This paper presents the development of a course syllabus and associated performance criteria and metrics and the implementation of an assessment plan. It will go beyond EC2000 outcomes by identifying diagnostic and criterion assessment mechanisms. The assessment process will focus on the performance criteria, performance metrics, grading methods, and tracking and feedback for continuous improvement. A survey-feature of the assessment plan will be tested on a typical engineering course and an examination of how such a course would fit in the larger picture of an engineering program will be performed. Finally, this paper concludes in matching EC2000’s educational outcomes (a-k) to the educational objectives of the course, maps the assessment tools of the course to Bloom’s taxonomy of learning, and comments on the usefulness of an outcomes-based assessment survey.