Procedures Used to Measure Student Outcomes
Student outcomes are measured in six ME/MRE courses. Four of these courses are at the junior level, and two are at the senior level. The list of required ME/MRE courses, including the courses that are assessed, are given in “Required Course Table” under the Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering Assessment Coverage Maps. Numbers 1 to 7 at the top of table refer to seven student outcomes defined in the previous section. The second column of the table indicates the assessment semester for each course. In this table, the letter A indicates which student outcome is assessed. The letter c means the course contains the student outcome, but it is not used in the assessment process. Although each of the seven courses measures a few outcomes, the senior design course (MRE 480/481) measures the largest number of outcomes. Senior design is a two-semester course sequence that provides a culminating experience in the program and has a central role in the assessment process.
Course assessment is done by the instructor who teaches the course. Although courses are taught by the faculty based on their expertise, the course rotates among the faculty with similar expertise. Therefore, all faculty members of the program teach at least one of the seven assessed courses at some time. This arrangement ensures that all faculty are involved in the assessment process. The procedure is for each instructor to use the same rubric for collecting assessment data. However, depending on the course, different sources of information or instruments are used to collect information and assess the performance indicators of the rubric. Among the sources used are:
- specific part of a test question that is heavy in a particular student outcome
- course project
- instructor's observations during laboratory work
- instructor's observations of team work in courses involving project
- test grade in particular questions that address the outcomes
- written project proposal in senior design
- oral presentation of the project proposal in senior design
- peer evaluation of each student in the team
- written project reports in courses that have course project and in senior design
- oral presentation of the project in courses that have project and in senior design
- essays on life-long learning, ethical issues, and societal impact in senior design course
The program avoids using course grades as a means of obtaining assessment scores. However, part of test questions may be used to determine whether a specific performance indicator \exceeds," \meets," or \does not meet" the relevant outcome.
The main source of information in the assessment process is the required ME/MRE courses. However, another source of information is the senior exit survey conducted each fall and spring semester. Students who are surveyed are those who graduate in that semester or are close to graduation. The survey has two parts; Part 1 is to collect students' information; Part 2 is anonymous. These are self-assessment information and provide the students' view of the program. The last row of “Required Course Table” indicates all student outcomes 1 to 7 are assessed by the survey.
