A holistic approach for student assessment in project-based multidisciplinary engineering capstone design

Abstract

A capstone design course involves multiple variables and complexities which make its teaching conspicuously challenging1,2; e.g., sponsors' requirements, team dynamics, and available resources, as well as the usual engineering educational goals. At the core of the challenge is assessment - giving each student a fair final grade. In this paper we describe a holistic approach to developing a fair and accurate evaluation of individual students in multidisciplinary teams. The rubrics of the approach include faculty assessment of communication skills, team participation, design process, and project results, with input from students and sponsors to calibrate the evaluations of the instructors. This approach represents an evolution from our traditional methods, which were based primarily on group reports, and student peer evaluations. In addition, we adopted a new team teaching approach that facilitates multidisciplinary participation; and also made the grading processes more objective by separating the roles associated with instructor, coaching, and judging. Furthermore, implementation of a communication intensive requirement provided greater insight into individual student contributions. The holistic approach allows greater consistency in the grading process yet is flexible enough to handle a wide variety of multidisciplinary design projects and helps accommodate different disciplinary foci. We submit that the basic structure of the assessment (i.e., blending objectives with procedural justice and evaluation from multiple sources) is consistent with practices in industry that students will face after their graduation. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2010.