Lessons Learned In Assessing Senior Engineering Capstone Design Course Learning With A Variation On The Tidee Design Team Readiness Assessment (Dtra) I And Ii
- Conference
- Location
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Chicago, Illinois
- Publication Date
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June 18, 2006
- Start Date
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June 18, 2006
- End Date
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June 21, 2006
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Design in Engineering Education
- Page Count
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10
- Page Numbers
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11.886.1 - 11.886.10
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--730
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/730
- Download Count
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380
Paper Authors
Martha Green Texas A&M University
Martha Green is an Educational Psychology PhD student at Texas A&M University,with an M.Ed. in Educational Technology and BA/BS degrees in History and Business/Accounting. Formerly a K-12 teacher, she is a Graduate Assistant in the Educational Assessment Resources unit in the College of Engineering at TAMU, was assessment consultant to the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program and is managing assessment of the BOEING Project
Parag Ravindran Texas A&M University
Parag Ravindran is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University with both M.S. and B.E. degrees in Mechanical Engineering. He is currently a Teaching Assistant and was formerly a Graduate Assistant Analyst in the Educational Assessment Resources Unit of the College of Engineering at TAMU.
Rita Caso Texas A&M University
Rita Caso is the Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness for Sam Houston State University and was previously Deputy Director of the Division of Academic Development in the College of Engineering at Texas A&M University, directing its Educational Assessment Resources unit. She has been a principal researcher and evaluator for several NSF initiatives in the areas of engineering and science education.
Jeffrey Froyd
orcid.org/0000-0002-4426-2681
Jeffrey Froyd is a Research Professor in the Center for Teaching Excellence and Director of Academic Development at Texas A&M University. He was Project Director for the Foundation Coalition, one of the NSF Engineering Education Coalitions and Project Director for "Changing Faculty through Learning Communities," a project sponsored by the NSF Research on Gender in Science and Engineering Program.
Xiafeng Li Texas A&M University
Xiafeng Li is a PhD student of computer science at Texas A&M University. He got his B.S. from Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in mechanical engineering in 1997, and M.S. from Shanghai Jiaotong University in computer engineering in 2001. His research areas include computer network, bin packing, and statistical data analysis.
L. Alan Minnick Texas A&M University
L Alan Minnick (retired) was an educational research technician for the Educational Assessment Resources unit in the College of Engineering at Texas A&M University with previous experience in testing and measurement at the State
University of California, Hayward. He participated in the scoring of engineering
design assessments at TAMU which used several versions of the TIDEE assessment instruments.
Ram Shukla Texas A&M University
Ram Shukla is currently pursuing PhD in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Texas A & M University. He has a Master of Industrial Engineering from this department. He also holds an MBA with specialization in Finance from the University of Lucknow and a Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering-Honors from University of Gorakhpur in India. He has over 7 years of combined teaching and industry work experience.
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
Lessons Learned in Assessing Senior Engineering Capstone Design Course Learning with a Variation on the TIDEE Design Team Readiness Assessment I and II
Abstract:
Efficacy of engineering design education in an interdisciplinary team-based course setting, with exposure to the broader concerns of business, finance and management, interests many educators. This paper reports on the use of design knowledge assessment patterned after the Transferable Integrated Design Engineering Education (TIDEE) Design Team Readiness Assessment (DTRA) I and II [1,2,3,4] to evaluate what aerospace, mechanical, electrical and computer science students learned about engineering design as a result of participating in a Boeing-supported, two-semester, project-based senior capstone design course at Texas A&M University. The Boeing course sequence was designed to provide students with the experience of working in multi-disciplinary teams on a design and implementation project while receiving instruction in elements of project management from a business perspective. Students were assessed using rubric-based instruments and customized team design simulation procedures similar to Parts I & II of the TIDEE Design Knowledge Assessment at the beginning and at the end of their senior capstone design project. This paper will discuss the lessons learned about the design knowledge assessment process to measure the preparedness of students at the beginning of the capstone design class and the evolution of their understanding of the design process at the end of the two- semesters of course work. Pre-to-post treatment group comparisons and control group comparisons were used in the assessment design, which also compared the rubric-based assessment with content analysis of students’ written responses to assessment questions. Results indicated that the content analysis was more effective in capturing students’ increased understanding of the design process, and the reasons for this are explored. Specific changes for improving the assessment process have been implemented for the project in the 2005-06 academic year.
I. Introduction
Many engineering programs incorporate a design course in the senior year as a culmination and refining process for the engineers they graduate [5-7]. Driven by industry demands, there have been attempts to improve the quality of the design education of engineers by incorporating increasingly more authentic, professional design conditions and incorporating elements of business, finance and management in the capstone design class [8-9]. The aim is to produce engineers who are more productive earlier in their careers. But attempts to ascertain the efficacy of these efforts require more tools and wider application of these tools [10–11]. For example, McKenzie et al. wrote that “…faculty members suggested that they lacked information and know-how to develop assessments for all users, write clear and appropriate course objectives, and determine whether assessments used in courses are as fair as desired” [9]. This paper examines the adaptation and development of a specific tool for assessing changes in student performance and cognitive growth in interdisciplinary and single-discipline
Green, M., & Ravindran, P., & Caso, R., & Froyd, J., & Li, X., & Minnick, L. A., & Shukla, R. (2006, June), Lessons Learned In Assessing Senior Engineering Capstone Design Course Learning With A Variation On The Tidee Design Team Readiness Assessment (Dtra) I And Ii Paper presented at 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. 10.18260/1-2--730
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