Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 674 de 957
Development of the strategic assessment framework
The process of moving from the conceptual model to the strategic assessment framework
involved two fundamental activities: 1) the formulation of a set of founding principles
which captured the values and beliefs embedded in the conceptual model, and 2) the
development of a set of teaching practices and related artefacts which can support
academic staff participants in embodying and implementing the assessment framework
with students.
To date, we have formulated nine founding principles which can help instructors detect
and assess individual student learning in team-based subjects. As the following examples
illustrate, these principles help delimit both evidence of learning and the assessment
context itself:
• Team products, such as reports and presentations, by themselves provide
insufficient evidence of the breadth and depth of an individual student’s learning.
• Assessment of learning teams at the university should differ significantly from the
productdriven focus of working teams in industry by valuing individual and team
learning over “successful” completion of project assignments.
• An individual students' final grade should emphasise their final state of learning
rather than indications of learning at various points during the term. While
feedback may be given for work during the term, assessment of learning should be
conducted via a folio of evidence presented at the end of the term.
While the current framing of the founding principles may sound too brief and proscriptive,
the ultimate intention for this project is to capture and frame a paradigm for effective
assessment of individual student learning in engineering team-based subjects. We expect
that a key deliverable from this project will be a more fully realized description of both the
founding principles and the strategic assessment framework.
From these founding principles and the processes outlined in the conceptual model, the
research team created a sequence-driven assessment framework which creates clarity
between instructors and students about the relative importance within multiple streams
of subject content while creating the conditions for effective assessment.
Two artefacts play pivotal roles in this assessment framework: the performance standards
and the grading rubric (see Figure 1). The performance standards describe key quality
differences for student evidence of learning for each grading level and for each learning
outcome. These standards allow students to better understand the learning outcomes
themselves by describing standards of evidence for each outcome in terms such as fail
(insufficient evidence), pass (sufficient evidence), good (strong evidence), and excellent
(exceptional evidence). The grading rubric prioritizes the learning outcomes and lists the
level of evidence needed for each learning outcome in order to be awarded a particular
grade.
The dialogue between instructor and students about these artefacts serves to highlight the
strategic nature of this framework. Through writing the performance standards and then
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011