Students’ responses to authentic assessment designed to develop commitment to performing at their best

ABSTRACT

Engineering educators should motivate and support students in developing not only technical competence but also professional competence including commitment to excellence. We developed an authentic assessment to improve students’ understanding of the importance of ‘perfection’ in engineering – whereby 50% good enough will not be acceptable in industry. Subsequently we aimed to motivate them to practise performing at their best when they practice engineering. Students in a third-year mechanical and mechatronic engineering unit completed a team design project designed with authentic assessment features to replicate industry expectations and a novel marking scheme to encourage the pursuit of excellence. We report mixed responses from students. Students’ ratings of their levels of effort on this assessment indicate that many perceived a positive influence on their effort. However, students’ comments included several that were consistent with students experiencing the assessment as alienating.

KEYWORDS:

• Engineering education
• authentic curricula
• integrity
• assessment
• feedback
• competency formation

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the students for completing the reflections on their assessments and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Notes on Contributors

Andrew Guzzomi is an Assistant Professor with a keen interest in agricultural engineering. He teaches/has taught dynamics, vibration, and design. Stemming predominantly from teaching related to the unit which is the subject of this paper, he became the sole recipient of the Faculty of Computing Engineering and Mathematics Excellence in Teaching Award for 2011. He is qualified in mechanical engineering and completed his PhD in powertrain dynamics.

Sally Male undertakes research in engineering education and women in engineering. Her interests are in curriculum design, competencies, industry engagement, threshold concepts, and gender inclusivity. She is qualified in electrical engineering and completed her PhD in engineering education.

Karol Miller is the Winthrop Professor of Applied Mechanics at The University of Western Australia and an Honorary Distinguished Professor at Cardiff University. His main research interests include robotics, biomechanics, and numerical methods. He has 15 years of experience in teaching mechanisms and machines theory and has been a member of International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science (IFToMM) Technical Committee for Education. He is also the Australian representative for education to IFToMM.

ORCID

Sally A. Male http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9852-3077

Notes

1 It is acknowledged that although performing at one's best does not always correspond to the best performance, success and effort are highly correlated.