Application of Employee Appraisal Forms to Facilitate Assessment of Student Outcomes in the Engineering Capstone Course (Work-In-Progress)
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Abstract
A critical component of educating civil engineering students and preparing graduates to enter professional practice is the engineering capstone course. This paper describes a work-in-progress to evaluate the use of employee appraisal forms to facilitate self-reflection and counseling as a metacognitive strategy in engineering education. The authors have developed a “capstone support form” that mimics an employee evaluation report support form commonly used by a major employer of graduates from its academic program. Students are required to indicate their major performance objectives at the beginning of the capstone course and list their significant contributions and accomplishments throughout the duration of the course. Dividing the form into sections based on student objectives causes students to reflect upon their learning, specifically their goals and developmental growth in each outcome assessed. Individual counseling sessions between the student and instructor at the beginning, midpoint, and/or end of the course requires students to communicate results of their metacognition and receive direct feedback on their level of achievement in each student outcome. This tool will be of use to engineering educators looking to continuously improve their assessment and evaluation to which student outcomes are being obtained within the capstone course. This paper is a work-in-progress that presents a literature review, a proposed research methodology, and hypothesized results regarding the andragogical value of using employee appraisal forms to assess attainment of student outcomes within engineering capstone courses.