Assessment and Evaluation Practices in Engineering
Education: A Global Perspective
N. P. Subheesh, Satya Sundar Sethy
Department of Humanities & Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Chennai, India
npsubheesh@gmail.com
Abstract—‘Assessment’ and ‘evaluation’ are the integral
parts of the engineering curriculum. These components have
direct relevance to quality assurance in engineering education.
Literature suggests that better assessment and evaluation
practices require certain knowledge and skills about types and
methods of assessment and evaluation. It is found that most of
the engineering faculty members do not have concrete knowledge
about ‘assessment’ and ‘evaluation’ types and methods. Further,
it is argued that engineering educators are not well aware of
‘feedback comments’ that are associated with assessment
practices. Comments on students’ performances are essential
because it helps them to know their strengths and weaknesses of
a course. In this background, the paper critically analyses
assessment and evaluation practices in engineering education
setup across the globe. In particular, it discusses the challenges
faced by engineering faculty members while assessing students’
performances. Finally, the paper offers suggestions to improve
assessment and evaluation practices so that students doing
engineering programs will be largely benefited.
Keywords— Engineering Education; Assessment; Evaluation;
Feedback Comments; Quality Assurance in Engineering Education
I. INTRODUCTION
‘Assessment’ in higher education context refers to judging
students’ performance by awarding them score/mark about the
quality and extent of their achievement and providing
qualitative feedback [1]. It is an essential component of the
teaching-learning process that influences students on the one
hand and course teachers on the other hand. It motivates
students to learn subject contents and assists them to enhance
their learning. It guides them to identify strengths and
weaknesses of their learning. It also gives an opportunity to
students to overcome weaknesses of their learning. It guides
course teachers to evaluate their teaching performance with
reference to the courses that they offered to students. While
assessing students’ performances, they receive feedback on
the instructional design and effectiveness of the courses. They
identify the reasons for students’ good and bad performance(s)
of the course. By using the assessment results, course teachers
check whether students have achieved the learning objectives
of the course or not. Assessment, therefore, stimulates learning
in multiple ways. In short, it encourages and motivates
students to learn the subject contents, to diagnose their
strengths and weaknesses of a course, supplies information to
plan what they will do next.
In an engineering education setting, which is a part of
higher education, assessment plays a vital role to diagnose
students’ knowledge and skills in the engineering courses.
Engineering students require certain skills that would not be
assessed effectively by traditional assessment practices [2].
According to Suskie [3], in traditional assessment practices,
the focus is on reproducing the memorised knowledge.
Further, assessment is planned and executed without setting
the instructional objectives. One tool and one assessment
strategy are followed across the courses of a programme.
Assessments are based on purely course teachers’ expectations
from students. Further, assessment is treated as merely a
practice where course teachers often give quantitative
feedback (e.g. number) and seldom qualitative feedback. This
often leads to poor quality of learning for students. In contrast
to traditional assessment practices, ‘authentic’ assessment
practices are developed from research and best practices on
teaching and assessment methodologies [4], [5]. Authentic
assessment practices are carefully aligned with learning
objectives. These focus on the enhancement of students’
performance, skill, and creativity. Design and implementation
of such assessment methods are regarded as professional tasks
[6] in which most of the engineering educators lack expertise.
In higher education, the term ‘evaluation’ refers to the use
of quantitative evidence/data [7]. It does not include the
qualitative feedback component. Thus, evaluation is purely
quantitative in nature. In contrast to evaluation, ‘feedback’ is
an integral part of the assessment. The notion of assessment
necessarily includes qualitative feedback. Hence, assessment
can be regarded as ‘qualitative’. The feedback associated with
assessment is used to improve students’ learning and course
teachers’ teaching.
II. CRITICAL REVIEW OF TYPES AND METHODS OF ASSESSMENT
AND EVALUATION
Formative assessment and summative assessment are
regarded as the two ‘types’ of assessments whereas criterion-
referenced assessment and norm-referenced assessments are
considered as assessment ‘methods’. ‘Evaluation’ also has a
similar classification.
A. Formative Assessment
Formative assessment is defined as the task or activity
which provides feedback for students about their learning [8].
It does not carry a quantitative score/mark, which is associated
with a summative judgment. Instead, it contains a qualitative
feedback component (only), which is used by course teachers
and learners to improve the ongoing teaching-learning
process. In this sense, formative assessment is conversational
in intent, which tries to help the student in recognising the
path by which his/her performance can be better. Activities
relating to formative assessment are often entangled with
instructional objectives. Formative assessment can be used to
assess learners for modifying instructional objectives and
correcting further learning as in a feedback loop. This is made
through ongoing and timely qualitative feedback processes
until the achievement of all instructional objectives for better
learning [9]. Thus, formative assessment is described in the
educational literature as ‘assessment for learning’.
B. Summative Assessment
Irons [8] defines summative assessment as an activity that
results in a mark or grade which is subsequently used as a
judgment on student performance. Here students’ receive the
‘final language’ in the form of mark/score. Summative
assessment marks are used to classify students in a class at the
end of a course or a programme. Its function is to measure
achievement of instructional objectives and report the same to
students, parents, and other stakeholders. Summative
assessment is stated in literature as ‘assessment of learning’.
This ‘assessment of learning’ generally occurs at the end of a
semester in a course. Summative assessment often includes
awarding a final Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) or
marks. Hence, it can be used for certifying the required levels
of competency achieved by students.
The difference between formative and summative
assessment can be described with an analogy. When a cook
tastes the soup, it is formative assessment and when a guest
tastes the soup, it is a summative assessment. To explain,
when the cook tastes the soup by himself he can improve it
and make it better before serving to the guest, but when the
guest tastes the soup, even if it is not good, it does not get a
chance for improvement.
C. Criterion-Referenced Assessment
In the criterion-referenced assessment, course teacher cum
assessor's judgments on students’ performances are made
based on the achievements of course objectives. Thus, in
criterion-referenced assessment, it is theoretically possible that
each and every student belonging to a course could achieve all
the learning outcomes and end up with a higher grade, let’s
say ‘S’ grade. It justifies the relation between the course
objectives achievements and the scores awarded [10].
Criterion-referenced assessment is most often, but not always,
conveys students’ achievements and earned competency in a
course. In the criterion-referenced assessment, what extent a
student achieves the intended learning outcomes of a course is
judged [9]. Biggs [11] enunciates that in criterion-referenced
assessment, a correlation exists among course objectives,
teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks.
D. Norm-Referenced Assessment
In a norm-referenced assessment, a course teacher judges a
student’s achievements by comparing with his/her classmates’
achievements on an assignment [1]. Even without achieving
all the course objectives, a student may stand first in a class.
Norm-referenced assessment is colloquially known as
‘grading on the curve’. It is so because; grade sheet of a
student is often designed through a ‘bell-curve’. It is observed
that in norm-referenced assessment, course teachers push
some of the students to higher grades than they deserve or pull
some students from their deserving grades to design the ‘bell-
curve’. Thus, mark-sheet designed through such a curve is
always treated as relativistic [10]. While comparing a
student’s achievements with his/her classmates on an
assignment task, course teacher’s subjective and biased
notions on assessment may not be ruled out. Thus, norm-
referenced assessment does not communicate students’ real
achievements of a course and thereby misguides the students.
E. The Distinction between Assessment and Evaluation
As enunciated earlier, assessment can be regarded as the
process of collecting data, reviewing it and using the
information for improving learning by providing qualitative
feedback [3]. On the other hand, evaluation is the process of
making judgments about the teaching-learning system based
on predefined criteria and standards. In this sense, assessment
is to improve the quality and evaluation is to judge the quality.
Assessment is diagnostic and process-oriented whereas
evaluation is judgemental and product-oriented.
Evaluation is the final step that is used to gauge the quality
of an instructional system. It focuses on grading and
certification. Evaluation certifies students where they stand in
a course in a programme. The information on how much they
have achieved subject knowledge and whether they have
attained the required skills of a profession can be obtained
through certification. Certification can also be done in
conformity with the regulations of an external professional
body [9]. In this regard, it supplies information to the various
stakeholders associated with engineering education.
Stakeholders may use the evaluation results for specific
purposes such as employment short-listing. This underlines
the necessity of evaluation in addition to formative and
summative assessments.
F. Evaluation Types
Evaluation, which is purely quantitative in nature, can also
be classified as formative and summative. As mentioned
earlier, the significant difference is ‘evaluation’ does not
contain any (qualitative) feedback, in contrast to assessment. It
involves assigning marks/scores only. This difference can be
pinpointed with examples of Formative Assessment (FA),
Summative Assessment (SA), Formative Evaluation (FE), and
Summative Evaluation (SE). In an engineering course, if
qualitative feedback is only provided to students’ responses,
then it is judged as FA. Nevertheless, if only marks/grades
assign to the students’ responses, then it is treated as FE.
When course teachers provide qualitative feedback along with
marks/scores on students’ responses, it can be treated as SA.
Quizzes (Quiz 1, 2, etc.) having both feedbacks (to perform
better) as well as marks/scores is an example of SA. Quiz
marks will contribute to final grading. Summative Evaluation
(SE) is the final grade/mark students receive at the end of a
course. Normally at the semester/year end, students are
awarded a final grade/mark without any qualitative feedback
(from the course teacher). This can be regarded as an example
of SE.
III. SIGNIFICANCE OF FEEDBACK AND FEEDBACK COMMENTS
The expressions ‘assessment’ and ‘feedback’ are
invariably and indubitably related to each other. Feedback is
the teacher's response to student’s performance. Assessing
students’ performances and providing feedback on the
performance is a professional approach to assessment
practices. The rationale for providing feedback is to help
students to use feedback for the enhancement of their learning.
An effective assessment thus offers feedback on students’
performances. Assessment feedback guides students about
where and how they ought to be able to go next.
Irons defines feedback as ‘‘any information, process or
activity which affords or accelerates learning, whether
enabling students to achieve higher quality learning outcomes
than they might otherwise have attained or by enabling them
to attain these outcomes more rapidly’’ [8]. Black and Wiliam
identify feedback as a key component of formative assessment
[12]. Pellegrino suggests that learning is a process of
continuously modifying knowledge and skills and that
feedback is essential to guide and redirect student’s thinking
[13].
According to Yorke, “Academic professionals should
begin by commenting on strengths of students’ performance,
moves on to discuss weaknesses, and rounds the comments off
with encouragement for the future” [9]. Broadly, there are five
types of comments assessors should understand and use the
feedback practices. It is endorsed by Gibbs [14], Nicol and
Milligan [15].
Comments on the content of student’s response
Comments designed to enhance student’s skills
Comments that encourage further learning
Motivational comments on students’ performance
De-motivational comments on students’ responses
IV. ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND ASSESSMENT PRACTICES
Integrating a process of good assessment practice into
academic programmes has to be a major goal of every
engineering educational institution [16]. McDowell, White
and Davis [17] state that engineering departments are often
criticised by their students and by external quality reviewers,
for paying insufficient attention to the effective
implementation of good assessment practices. Christoforidou,
Kyriakides, Antoniou, and Creemers enunciate that
researchers need to identify and tackle such difficulties in
effective implementation of efficient assessments [18]. In
Shaeiwitz view [19], to implement a good assessment plan, a
paradigm shift in engineering faculty culture is needed so that
faculty members will communicate more about expectations
from course content and student learning.
Design, development and implementation of assessment
practices are challenging activities as assessment itself evolves
time to time along with the course curriculum, instructional
design and course objectives. Since engineering faculty
members hardly have had any formal training to learn how to
design a course, they are prone to commit an error while
designing instruction of a course. Further, they are not able to
formulate effective assessment strategies and assessment tools
of a course. According to Felder and Silverman, “The infusion
of accepted principles and practices of educational assessment
are having a significant impact on the development of
engineering curricula and the evaluation in terms of student
performance” [20].
In this context, Palmer enunciates that “engineering
educators should seek assistance from experts, where required,
to help in the development of appropriate student assessment”
[21]. He further points out that the pedagogies and measuring
techniques appropriate to the broader graduate attributes are
not widely known in engineering, and it will take the time to
acquire experience in them. Formulating measurable learning
outcomes and assessing students’ performances are
sophisticated activities with which most engineering educators
have had little or no experience [22].
Nonetheless, for an engineering faculty member, it is not
so easy to find out an educational expert who can help him in
developing better assessment practices. Practical guidelines on
effective assessment design in engineering courses are also not
readily available in engineering departments [21]. This is a
global scenario pointing to the need of more research study in
the area of student assessment and evaluation practices in
engineering education. It would be better if we can train and
develop such ‘assessment expert’ within each engineering
departments so that they can help other faculty members. It
can be done in collaboration with other departments like
education and social sciences. Existing educational theories
can then be tailor-made for engineering education to improve
both students learning and the quality of teaching.
From the global perspective, it is true that engineering
faculty members need not go through teacher training,
orientation, and certification programmes to join in
engineering teaching. This may result in them in difficulties to
develop better assessment tools, techniques of a course and
thereby practices to assess students’ learning. Any sort of
wrong assessment practice misguides students about their
learning and provides wrong information about where they
stand in a course. It further gives a wrong impression to the
stakeholders about the achievements and skills of engineering
graduates. This phenomenon does not help in achieving the
objectives of engineering education.
In addition, to develop the required skills of engineering
professionals, new forms of learning are introduced, such as
teamwork based collaborative learning, problem-based
learning, active learning, etc. The practices for assessing
students’ responses are also constantly changing. To put up
with these ever-changing demands of assessment practices
course instructors need to learn the multiple assessment
practices in engineering education.
Another issue, which can be traced from literature, most of
the engineering institutions across the globe are using norm-
based assessment practices those are treated as subjective [1],
[10], [23]. The assessors are making judgments on students’
performance based on their gut feelings, previous experiences
and existing conventions. As a result, the stakeholders may not
know what the level of achievement of a student is, in a
particular course.
A. Assessment and Quality Assurance
According to Yorke, assessment plays a pivotal role to
ascertain quality in HE settings [9]. Quality can’t be reduced
to merely a set of quantified learning outcomes [24]. So
improving the quality of learning for students is not just
ensuring achievement of learning outcomes by grading at the
end of the course. However, if integrity in grading were
achieved tolerably well, it would be possible to evaluate the
quality of teaching and learning [25]. Therefore, engineering
education settings, assessment does not only help students for
the growth of their learning but also monitor and continuously
assist in improving the quality of programmes. Sadler further
enunciates that through better assessment and grading
practices quality assurance in engineering education can be
ascertained [25].
V. DEVELOPMENT OF AN EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENT PRACTICE
Establishing clear as well as measurable instructional
objectives is the first step in the development of an authentic
student assessment [26]. In this regard, teacher training on
basic instructional system design emphasising Bloom's
taxonomy [27] would be helpful to establish and classify
instructional objectives. Next phase is the design and
implementation of regular formative assessment (and
qualitative feedback) for the improvement of learning. These
ongoing, continuous assessment tasks should be carefully
aligned with the predefined instructional objectives.
In the real contexts of engineering education, information
and communication technology (ICT) options such as web-
based assessment tools shall be considered to enhance
assessment effectiveness [28]. For instance, a two-level
objective test based on students’ misconceptions in an
engineering course can be implemented [29]. Based on the
answers clicked by the student in the two levels of linked
questions, online qualitative feedback can be provided. If
properly designed, this feedback can pinpoint the
misconception associated with student’s conceptual
understanding related to each of the instructional objectives. It
can be done on a regular basis for the continuous improvement
of learning. Such a web-based design can be used and reused
for practical situations like those that large numbers of
students are enrolled in a course. In addition, employing a
combination of criterion-referenced assessment and norm-
referenced assessment by taking positive aspects from both
would also be beneficial.
VI. SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION
Assessment and evaluation practices have to be
carefully aligned with instructional objectives of the
course. Establishing clear, measurable instructional
objectives is a prerequisite for the same.
The assessment ‘for’ learning – formative assessment
(and hence qualitative feedback) has to be given much
more priority than assessment ‘of’ learning –
summative assessment.
An optimal mix of criterion-referenced assessment
and norm-referenced assessment can be adapted.
Course teacher’s subjective and biased notions on
assessment can be ruled out by giving more preference
to criterion-referenced assessment.
Faculty members need to learn the multiple
assessment and evaluation practices with regard to
new forms of learning such as teamwork based
collaborative learning, problem-based learning, active
learning, etc.
Engineering faculty members have to seek assistance
from experts, where required, to get help in the
development of authentic student assessment.
Appropriate teacher training has to be offered to
engineering faculty members across the globe,
particularly on assessment practices. A comprehensive
training on instructional design and educational
theories leading to authentic assessment and
evaluation practices can be quite useful.
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