Initial Results in Developing an Engineering Reasoning Assessment for General Education
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2016-06-26
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American Society for Engineering Education
Abstract
Despite the importance of technology to our well-being and the significance of engineering principles to economic prosperity, limited work has been done measuring the degree to which undergraduate students possess a broad understanding of the principles, products, and processes of technology. While assessments of learning gains within courses that form part of an engineering major have been developed under ABET EC 2000, the means of assessing the technological understanding of the majority of undergraduates who are not engineering students is yet to be systematically addressed. The work reported here describes the initial stages of an effort to develop a technological literacy assessment suitable for use with students who are not intending careers in STEM disciplines. As an initial starting point, the work focuses on abilities related to the identification and characterization of systems. Specific abilities include identifying a system and its boundaries, recognition of inputs and outputs, analysis of system structure, determination of subfunctions within the system, recognition of major components, associating specific physical processes with particular components, and discernment of the boundaries of the system. The ability to synthesize systems to achieve a particular function in given technological domain is also considered. This work begins an effort to create some assessment tool appropriate for use with the large number of students who are not majoring in one of the STEM disciplines. Preliminary from using these assessments with undergraduate non-STEM majors are described.
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ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: Krupczak, J., & Mina, M., & Disney, K. A. (2016, June), Initial Results in Developing an Engineering Reasoning Assessment for General Education Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.25695.
Copyright 2016 American Society for Engineering Education.
Posted with permission.