Abstract:

Engineering mechanics is undisputably one of the foundations of any engineering discipline. The learning objectives of courses in that subject include the ability to solve problems computationally. Thus it is reasonable to design assessments accordingly, i.e., by requiring the students to solve given engineering problems. Engineering mechanics generally needs to be attended by all undergraduate students of a technical university, independent of their field of study. Hence, the number of students participating in these exams can be very high, e.g., approximately 1000 participants per year in the authors' case with numbers increasing as STEM subjects are gaining more popularity. A classical three-and-a-half-hour exam in engineering mechanics, consisting of four specific engineering problems to be solved, thus results in approx. 4000 example problems to be corrected and graded by the teaching personnel. It has to be taken into consideration that consequential errors in calculations have to be accounted for. Experience shows that on average at least 10 minutes are neccessary to adequately correct one example problem, resulting in approx. 670 hours of correction-work each year just for these final summative exams.

To tackle this problem and to reduce the time needed for grading, the examination procedure has been redesigned such that it consists of an e-assessment part and a classical paper-pencil part. In that approach, the e-assessment is implemented in the learning management system Moodle, consisting of 10 to 15 short questions with an overall available time of 70 minutes. These questions range from simple single or multiple select questions testing some basic theoretical knowledge (level one to two on Bloom's taxonomy) up to questions where students are required to perform calculations and provide the requested numerical answer in Moodle (level three to four on Bloom's taxonomy).

After a short break a 105 minute long classical paper-pencil part has to be taken. It consists of two considerably longer specific problems for the students to solve and thus checks the ability to transfer the theoretical knowledge to real world problems.

The results of e-assessment and overall exam have been investigated statistically, collecting data over several years. A clear correlation between the points achieved on the e-assessment and the classical one has been found. Furthermore, there is a well identifiable point limit for the e-assessment below which it is unlikely for the students to pass the overall exam. In the future this knowledge might be used to define a criterion for minimum points on the e-assessment required to be admitted to the subsequent paper-pencil part, further reducing the number of exams that must be corrected manually.

Furthermore, self-assessment tests are provided prior to the exams as a formative assessment to provide feedback to the students if they are sufficiently prepared.

The questions we are trying to answer in this contribution are: What is a good design of questions for e-assessments in engineering mechanics? How does one go about building an adequate pool of questions and consistently renew that pool? Has the performance of students changed since the introduction of the e-assessment? Does the combination of e-assessment and paper-pencil part reduce the overall time required to prepare and correct exams? And finally, is an e-assessment a suitable tool to check the students' ability to solve engineering problems?

Keywords:

Engineering mechanics, e-assessment, computational problems, STEM, undergraduate.