Program-Level Assessment

Abstract

Undergraduate engineering students are customarily tested for their content knowledge in exams which usually involve long-answer calculation-based questions. Although most programs use exam grades as a proxy for student knowledge uptake and evidence for attainment of CEAB graduate attributes, there is no guarantee that students have understood the underlying fundamental concepts let alone long-time retention of their newly acquired knowledge. This paper discusses the development of a yearly assessment in the form of a concept inventory that is administered once at the beginning of the academic year (pre-test) and repeated in about a year (post-test). The analysis of the results showed a normalized gain of 20% in student knowledge. Further analysis revealed that there are no statistically significant differences between the male and female students suggesting an overall equitable learning experience by gender in our program. The normalized gain for each core course of the curriculum was also calculated which serve as curricular feedback for instructors identifying areas where improved instructional methods would provide benefits. Finally, a report is produced for each student to provide them with valuable feedback on how well they learned and retained the fundamental concepts they learned over the past academic year.