Study of the Effects of Non-Traditional Examination Methods in Engineering Education Programmes

Abstract

The way in which we assess our students influences to a large extent what and how they study, and the outcomes of their learning. Thus our choice of assessment methods can be a strong tool for influencing our students' study strategies and, as a consequence, the quality of their education. In this project we will develop and evaluate non-traditional assessment methods within the Engineering Physics programme. Our goal is that these methods should improve students' learning, encourage good study strategies and affect motivation. We intend to show that these goals are fulfilled, i.e. that the methods are, and not only seem to be, good assessment methods. We want to answer the following questions: how do these non-traditional examination methods affect students' learning with regard to what they learn (e.g. their understanding of central concepts and to what degree this corresponds to relevant knowledge within the field), how they approach their studies (e.g. how they work with the course material and how they recognize their work) and the connection between these issues. how can these non-traditional methods be further developed in the light of the new insights and still stay within the budget frames. An important constraint in this project is that these non-traditional methods should not increase the workload of either students or teachers. Another important constraint is that these methods do not necessitate changes in the infrastructure of the educational programme, for example, in number of courses, number of students, physical layout of buildings etc. It is important that the investigation should give results that are relevant for fields of study other than engineering physics, like computer science, information technology and electronics. For more information and links to published reports, please visit our project page, http://www.docs.uu.se/docs/cse/projects/expresso.html