Lisa Benson is an Associate Professor of Engineering and Science Education at Clemson University, with a joint appointment in Bioengineering. Her research focuses on the interactions between student motivation and their learning experiences. Her projects involve the study of student perceptions, beliefs and attitudes towards becoming engineers and scientists, and their problem solving processes. Other projects in the Benson group include effects of student-centered active learning, self-regulated learning, and incorporating engineering into secondary science and mathematics classrooms. Her education includes a B.S.
This evidence-based practice paper documents the faculty experience of implementing specifications grading in different types of engineering courses. Rather than evolving from learning theory or research, current grading practices have primarily arisen from canonical practices created three centuries ago, originally created to rank students against each other. Such ranking or competition derived practices are out of alignment with modern outcomes-based engineering assessment practices. Specifications grading, an alternative, is a framework for assessment grounded in learning theory as well as student agency. The cornerstone of specifications grading is treating each assignment as a pass/fail marker of mastery using clearly defined and transparent criteria. With limited examples in engineering, this paper provides a clear introduction to specifications grading for the engineering education community and presents case studies of the use of specifications grading in engineering classrooms. Our three case studies include insights into transitioning a senior design course co-taught by technical communication faculty from rubric-based grading, transitioning a lower-level statistics class from bell-curve grading, and developing a new first-year engineering course. With these cases, we aspire to create a diverse set of advice and templates for other faculty to adopt in their classes to implement specification grading as well as common pitfalls to avoid when first adopting it.
This article discusses the findings of a survey of nearly 300 computing professionals who are involved in the design and/or development of software across a variety of industries. We report on the surveyed professionals’ perceptions of the importance of a range of topics and skills, and the degree to which 55 recent graduates felt that each topic or skill was emphasized in their undergraduate experience. Our findings highlight the value of breadth and flexibility in technical skills, and the universal importance of critical thinking, problem solving, on-the-job learning, and the ability to work well in cross-disciplinary teams. These findings align roughly with recommendations by the ACM/IEEE task force on computing curricula. However, the recent graduates we surveyed report inconsistent coverage of these most important areas within their degree experiences. We discuss implications for education and for future research.
Recent scholarship has emphasized incorporating innovation experiences into engineering curricula. These experiences are often positive, especially when students have the opportunity to solve novel but challenging problems, navigate their own processes, critically reflect on their experiences, and receive appropriate levels of support and scaffolding. This study further explores the role of scaffolding on innovation and non-innovative projects through the lens of Vygotsky's theory of proximal development. Ten engineering seniors participated in semistructured interviews focusing on their experiences with innovative and non-innovative projects and their general perspectives related to innovation. We utilized a qualitative content analysis approach to identify students' experiences within and outside of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development during innovation projects to which students felt they did and did not substantially contribute and non-innovative projects. Analysis revealed distinct characterizations aligned with experiences preceding, within, beyond their zones of proximal development on the three project types. These findings have key implications for those learning to become innovative and the way educators utilize innovation projects in the context of engineering education. In particular, they demonstrate strong connections between tasks in the zone of proximal development, how students develop technical and professional competencies during innovation projects, and how instructors may structure their projects to improve learning and innovation outcomes by establishing support practices from a variety of individuals.
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