Work in Progress: Assessing Motivation in Capstone Design Courses

Effective assessment of student learning outcomes desired by industry is required to truly impact curriculum change. As part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) project, several workshops and advisor meetings have guided the selection of outcomes and creation of the first draft of assessment instruments to measure selected outcomes. Over 1000 respondents to a variety of industry surveys, including those identified by industry representatives in the Transforming Undergraduate Education in Engineering (TUEE) workshop, identify top industry-sought outcomes as curiosity, critical thinking, teamwork, motivation, and communication. The authors selected motivation as the first outcome to address and chose the capstone design course as the first test bed. Interviews with faculty led to definition of design requirements for assessment instruments for use in capstone courses. The 2016 Capstone Design Conference workshop and a follow-on workshop at the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) annual conference led to the finalization of the first set of four assessments to measure student motivation. This paper describes the learning outcome selection process, assessment development process, and initial assessment instruments.