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Using Blackboard Quiz Pools and Other Automated Grading in Mechanical Engineering Courses

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Conference

2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Minneapolis, MN

Publication Date

August 23, 2022

Start Date

June 26, 2022

End Date

June 29, 2022

Conference Session

Computers in Education 3 - Modulus I

Page Count

16

DOI

10.18260/1-2--40594

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/40594

Download Count

197

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Paper Authors

biography

Keith Hekman California Baptist University

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Keith Hekman is a Professor at California Baptist University where he teaches courses on AutoCAD, Excel, SOLIDWORKS, LabVIEW, Machine Design, and Vibrations. His research has been on automated grading.
Prior to teaching at CBU, he taught at Calvin College and the American University in Cairo. He received his PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology

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Ziliang Zhou California Baptist University

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Abstract

Instructors give homework to help students apply what they are learning in class. Grading the assignments is a time-consuming process for the instructor or teaching assistant, so the feedback to the student comes at a time when they are no longer thinking of the problem. In addition, many students obtain access to textbook solutions. Some book publishers (e.g., Pearson’s Mastering Engineering and McGraw Hill’s Connect) provide automated grading for homework problems. However, using a publisher’s grading site is an additional expense for the students. To keep the benefits of automated grading, without the cost to the students, question pools in Blackboard were created for textbook problems but using different numbers. The same method was used for tests in some courses, allowing each student to have a different exam than other students in the class. Besides Blackboard problems, a grading program that automatically grades Excel files was used in one class to grade more complicated homework. Solving problems in Excel allowed problems involving significant calculations and graphs, such as a stress-strain curve to be computer-graded. At the end of the semester, the students completed a survey about their experiences with the automated grading systems. Students found the grading helpful and appreciated not having the extra expense of a textbook grading system. Setting up the problems was more effort in one semester than grading the work, but it will reduce the professor’s workload in future semesters.

Hekman, K., & Zhou, Z. (2022, August), Using Blackboard Quiz Pools and Other Automated Grading in Mechanical Engineering Courses Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40594

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