Development of a Supplemental Evaluation for Engineering Design Courses

Compared to the learning that occurs in most engineering courses, the learning that occurs in design courses is more dependent on students, and less dependent on instructors. Because typical course evaluations are instructor-centric and do not provide information about students’ contributions to their learning, we developed a supplemental evaluation to assess student actions and attitudes important to a quality design experience. We detected statistically-significant, logical shifts in self-reported practices and attitudes as student cohorts progressed through design projects. Factor analysis showed that the evaluation questions could be grouped into eight thematic categories, with most of the questions assessing student ability to function independently in uncertain situations, self-perception of maturation and achievement, and acceptance of responsibility for learning. Accepting responsibility for learning and believing that design experiences helps transition from being a student to being a professional were correlated with high student ratings of overall instructor performance and overall learning experience.