Assessment Plan

Assessment Plan: M.S. in Engineering Education

After careful considerations and discussions, we have identified two critical core courses and the most important milestone that all students in our M.S. in Engineering Education program are required to complete. The two critical core courses include EED 6090 and EED 6150. The most important milestone is the Master’s Thesis Research (for Plan A students) or Master’s Research Project (for Plan B students).

EED 6090 Developing an Engineering Education Curriculum

This course reviews the basic principles and practices of curriculum development required for an engineering education curriculum. The emphasis of this course is placed on the integration of research findings and best practices into course design. This course directly addresses the following learning objective of the M.S. program:

LO1_MS: Create (e.g., design, develop, formulate) learning objectives and assessments relevant to those learning objectives

The faculty instructor who teaches EED 6090 provides a comprehensive assessment of student learning using a variety of method, such as homework assignments and exams. At the end of the course, each Master’s student is assigned a score of 1-5 representing the level of evidence that the student meets the above learning objective. The level of evidence is ranked from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates the lowest level of evidence and 5 the highest level of evidence.

EED 6150 Teaching, Learning & Assessment in Engineering Education

This course provides an overview of the various methods used to measure and evaluate student achievement within the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains are covered. The principles of learning and assessment as it is applied to Engineering Education are also reviewed. This course directly addresses the following learning objective of the M.S. program:

LO2_MS: Understand (e.g., identify, classify, describe, explain) various methods to measure and evaluate student achievement within the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains

The faculty instructor who teaches EED 6150 provides a comprehensive assessment of student learning using a variety of method, such as homework assignments and exams. At the end of the course, each Master’s student is assigned a score of 1-5 representing the level of evidence that the student meets the above learning objective. The level of evidence is ranked from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates the lowest level of evidence and 5 the highest level of evidence.

Master’s Thesis Research (for Plan A students) and Master’s Research Project (for Plan B students)

All students in our M.S. in Engineering Education (Plan A) program are required to complete a 6-credit Master’s Thesis Research that leads to a M.S. Thesis. All students in our M.S. in Engineering Education (Plan B) program are required to complete a 3-credit Master’s Research Project that leads to a Research Project Report. The Thesis and the Report typically consists of six chapters, including Chapter 1 Introduction, Chapter 2 Review of Literature, Chapter 3 Research Methodology/Design, Chapter 4 Results, Chapter 5 Discussions, and Chapter 6 Conclusions/Significance/Implications.

Each chapter in the M.S. Thesis or Research Project Report is associated with at least one learning objective (LO3_MS, LO4_MS, and LO5_MS). The student’s Supervisory Committee, which consists of the student’s Major Professor and two other faculty members inside the Department, read and review the student’s Thesis or Research Project Report to determine the level of evidence that the student meets the learning objectives. The level of evidence is ranked from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates the lowest level of evidence and 5 the highest level of evidence.

Each committee member assesses each chapter of the student’s Ph.D. Dissertation using the following rubric:

The average score (i.e., the level of evidence) is calculated based on all scores provided by all committee members on each learning objective.