Development of scoring rubric for evaluating integrated understanding in an undergraduate biologically-inspired design course

• Autores: Inbal E. Flash Gvili, M.J. Weissburg, Jeannette Yen, Michael E. Helms, Craig A. Tovey
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 32, no. 1 (Parte A), 2016, págs. 123-135
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The key intended learning outcome of interdisciplinary engineering courses and programs is the development of students’ability to integrate knowledge known as integrated understanding. Still, there are only few examples of assessment tasksdesigned to deliberately assess this attribute in engineering education, and little is known about how to develop crediblescoring rubrics that can assess integrated understanding promoted by specific interdisciplinary courses. In this paper weoffer an operational definition of integrated understanding developed based on the literature. We also present a method fordesigning credible scoring rubrics for course-specific integrated understanding based on this definition. Our processestablishes the rubric’s validity through aligning course learning objectives with the rubric criteria and reliability throughinvolving course teachers who often come from different disciplinary backgrounds in developing performance-leveldescriptions. We tested the method by applying it to design a rubric for evaluating integrated understanding in aninterdisciplinary undergraduate elective course in Biologically-Inspired Design. The resulted rubric was used to gradestudents’ reports (n = 27) by the course teachers who came from disciplines as varied as Biology and Engineering.Reliability calculated through Intra-Class Correlation (ICC) was good to excellent with regard to all criteria. The rubriccan thus be reliably used by the course teachers to draw valid conclusions regarding progression in students’ integrativeunderstanding in their course. Additionally, this method can be used to establish credible scoring rubrics for evaluatingstudents’ integrated understanding following participation in other interdisciplinary engineering courses.