Department of Mechanical Engineering

Assessments by Group

The student assessment originally consisted of an evaluation of students' opportunities to master program outcomes in their courses.

Between Spring 2003 and Summer 2005 this assessment was expanded to include an evaluation of students' opportunities to master specific course objectives. However, the evaluation of course objectives was dropped from the student assessment starting in Fall 2005 when a separate course objectives assessment was adopted by the ME program.

The student assessment has reverted to its original intent of evaluating students' opportunities to master program outcomes in their courses. The Assessment staff person in the departmental office is responsible for packaging copies of the Program Outcomes questionnaire and bubble sheets for sections of courses being taught during a semester and distributing to the instructors.

1. Preparing and Distributing Student Assessments
   a. Instructions on role of instructors on preparing for assessment

   b. Form for Student Assessment of Program Outcomes (distributed as packets to course instructors by staff person)

2. Scoring and Recording Student Assessments

   a. Memo to the office of Test and Evaluation Services providing instructions to prepare results (submitted by staff person)

   b. Instructions for calculating multiple section statistics (prepared by  staff person from bubble sheet data)

   c. Template for recording results of student assessments (prepared by staff person from computer-scored bubble sheet data)

(Performed every semester by faculty teaching core and design courses)

The Course Objectives Assessment was added in Fall 2005 to provide a more direct assessment of student learning in the ME program.

The goal of this assessment is to determine how many students are mastering course objectives in core and design courses. The approach is to allow faculty to customize this assessment to their class, as long as every course objective is evaluated.

For example, some faculty may use a fairly conventional approach of using quizzes or exams to determine how well their students are mastering course objectives while others may use group projects, class discussion, or other forms of feedback from students to gather the necessary data to make this assessment.

Faculty are responsible for documenting their assessment plan, performing the assessments, and preparing a table showing what percent of students are judged to have mastered each course objective.

This information is passed along to the CDC for that course, which maps this information back to program outcomes and uses it in preparing their CDC report to the ME Curriculum Committee.

1. Performing Course Objectives Assessments
   1. Instructions to instructors for submitting assessment plan and performing assessment
       
2. Scoring and recording Course Objectives Assessments
   1. Sample Template for recording results of student assessments (prepared by staff person from computer-scored bubble sheet data)

1. Instructions for the Design Panel (Word)
   
2. Design Panel rubrics (Word)
   
3. Design Panel data template (Excel)
4. Template (Word) for letter to participants (faculty, students, industrial member) on panel

(Performed by 3-year alumni)

1. Alumni assessment 

   a. Instructions for performing assessment

   b. Draft letter to send to alumni

   c. Survey form to mail to alumni
   

2. Spreadsheet for tabulating and statistically evaluating results  (prepared by departmental staff from surveys returned to the department)
   

3. Template for recording results of alumni (prepared by departmental staff from spreadsheet analysis)