Service-learning and Engineering: Design Projects That Promote Inclusion and Independence

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Standards-Based Grading: Preliminary Studies to Quantify Changes in Affective and Cognitive Student Behaviors

Assessing student learning is a key component to education. Most institutions assess learning using a score-based grading system. Such systems use multiple individual assignment scores to produce a cumulative final course grade, which may or may not represent what a student has learned. Standards-based grading offers an alternative that addresses the need to directly assess how well students are developing toward meeting the course objectives. The course objectives are the focal point of the grading system, allowing the instructor to assess students on clearly defined objectives throughout the course. The system assesses how well students become proficient in the course objectives over the duration of the course. This study extends the use of standards-based grading at the K-12 level into the realm of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Five STEM courses pilot tested the integration of a standards-based grading system to investigate how it impacts affective and cognitive student behaviors. The results suggest that a standards-based grading system increased student domain-specific self-efficacy, was perceived as valuable, and helped students develop more sophisticated beliefs about STEM knowledge

Standards-based Grading: An Alternative to Score-based Assessment

Standards-based grading involves assessment of student development towards achieving the course objectives throughout the duration of a course. Final course grades are then determined based on students’ overall development towards achieving the course objectives. There have been no studies to date that investigate this specific system for undergraduate science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. This groundbreaking study involves the implementation of standards-based grading in a sophomore-level undergraduate course in Mechanics of Materials. The goals of this study are: 1) to obtain insight in how to best implement standards-based grading in an undergraduate STEM course, and 2) to obtain a sense of how students respond to standards-based grading. Students (N=30) were asked two questions at the end of the course: 1) if the standards-based grading system is more conducive to learning than the traditional, summative score-based grading system, and 2) if they prefer standards-based grading to the traditional grading system. The preliminary results suggest that the vast majority of the students, at a minimum, agree that standards-based grading is more conducive to learning (89.3%) and that they prefer standards-based grading (85.7%). Student comments also support the quantitive results. In addition, this study provides significant insight regarding implementation of standards-based grading for undergraduate courses in STEM

Material Redesign of a Lower Leg Sports Prosthesis

In this research project, carbon fiber is explored as a potential replacement material for grade 5 titanium alloy in sports prosthesis. Grade 5 titanium alloy is the main structural component of current sports prosthesis, but as a material it has some key flaws. In order to make improvements in the field of sports prosthesis, carbon fiber is to be tested as a potential replacement material for titanium. Carbon fiber was chosen as it is seen as a very strong, new material and its potential to be used in various fields has been detailed by many scientists, designers, and engineers. The research will be conducted on both grade 5 titanium rods and carbon fiber rods of identical dimensions. The tests will include bending, compression, and torsion trials. Following testing, the data gathered on the titanium and carbon fiber will be compared, a strength to weight ratio for each material will be calculated, and cost will be analyzed. After all of this information is examined, it will be determined if carbon fiber represents a viable replacement for titanium in sports prosthesis

Using standards-based grading to effectively assess project-based design courses

Standards-based grading (SBG) is an alternative to traditional score-based grading systems that allows an instructor to provide assessment linked to course objectives. SBG ties assessment throughout a course with these objectives, while also providing clear, meaningful feedback, fairness and transparency in the grading process, and useful program assessment. Project-based design courses align well with SBG because their nature demands repeat assessment of fundamental learning objectives. The following study investigated the use of SBG in two cornerstone design courses with similar learning objectives at different ABET accredited engineering programs. Overall, students reported that the standards based grading system has higher value (2.94 + 0.87) than cost (2.03 + 0.78) on a 4-point scale (p \u3c0.001). Students at the small, liberal arts college responded with generally higher ratings for both value and cost, with a larger average difference between combined value and cost (1.0 and 0.81, respectively), than students at a large, public university. Additionally, students reported higher self-efficacy in design-based objectives after the course, with an average self-efficacy increase of 15-20 points on a 100-point scale. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2014