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Session 3548

MiniTab in Assessment of the Dynamics Course

Zhongming Liang

Purdue University Fort Wayne

Abstract

For better interpretation of assessment data, the author uses MiniTab, a statistical analysis software package, for evaluating students’ learning outcomes with multiple statistical measures in several his courses in the Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) program, such as the dynamics course discussed in this paper as an example. The better assessment and follow-up actions have indeed led to improvement of students’ learning and satisfaction. Expected course learning outcome, assessment tools, statistical analysis in assessment process, assessment-based actions for improvement and improvement results are discussed in the body of the paper.

Introduction

To meet the ABET requirements1 and the university requirements2, assessment is performed on each course. The author of this paper uses MiniTab, a statistics tool, to evaluate students’ learning outcomes with multiple statistical measures for each of his courses and uses the assessment results to define actions for continuous improvement. The actions have indeed led to improvement of students’ learning and satisfaction. Since the dynamics course has always been a difficult one for the students, it is used for discussion in this paper.

The paper is organized as follows. First, we list the course learning outcomes and show the assessment tool matrix of the learning outcomes. Then we discuss assessment with statistical analysis. The statistical analysis goes beyond normally used statistical measures for assessment such as the mean, the median and the standard deviation of collected data. Therefore more useful information can be extracted for continuous improvement. The assessment and statistical analysis are supplemented by a survey of students’ perception of their learning. Finally we discuss actions as suggested by the assessment results and learning outcomes improvement resulting from the actions

Defining course learning outcomes

This section is an integral part of the paper. Course learning outcomes are defined to serve the program learning outcomes. The syllabus of the dynamics course has these:

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Liang, Z. (2005, June), Minitab In Assessment Of The Dynamics Course Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15099