Assessment of student achievement in engineering design is an important part of engineering education and vital to engineering program accreditation. Systematic assessment of design is challenging yet necessary for program improvement. Programs with design distributed across the curriculum and with significant numbers of transfer students face special challenges in assessing students' design capabilities and providing meaningful feedback to improve design education. This manuscript presents an assessment process that supports effective transfer of design credits, feedback for improvement of design education, and evaluation of program success in design education. Mid‐program and end‐of‐program assessment strategies are included. Design scoring standards are presented to establish a basis for making performance comparisons within and among programs.

Assessment of student performance has become a fundamental aspect of teaching and learning and a key task for engineering educators under new ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) engineering accreditation requirements. Assessment of performance also provides new challenges for many faculty. The purpose of this paper is to fill a void in the literature and assist faculty to meet part of the performance assessment development challenge. Specifically, this paper focuses on a critical feature of performance assessment—the development of scoring criteria. Straightforward guidelines for designing scoring criteria are provided from recent project experiences of the authors. Sample scoring criteria are also provided along with a concrete project example illustrating the development process in an engineering education context.

An assessment system was developed and piloted in Washington state to evaluate the engineering design competence of community college transfer students and continuing students at Washington State University (WSU) and the University of Washington (UW). A multiple measured approach was employed consisting of a multiple-choice assessment, a team design performance assessment, and an essay, each administered to junior level students at WSU and UW. These assessments covered important design and design-related outcomes valued by the engineering community in Washington and expected of junior level engineering students. Scoring criteria were developed by engineering faculty for the team design and essay components. The assessment results provide faculty and other decision makers at community colleges and fouryear institutions with data they need to determine the extent to which students are meeting design competency expectations. Moreover, the approach described in this paper illustrates how institutions can productively address the ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 requirements by developing the assessment support that engineering educators need to make informed programmatic decisions and achieve continuous quality improvement. I. OVERVIEWUnderscoring the connection between assessment and quality engineering education, the Joint Task Force on Engineering Education Assessment recently issued a report on the importance of program assessment in the pursuit of program improvement. 1This report provides a framework for developing a comprehensive, systematic program assessment plan. The task force highlights the use of assessment data by program decision makers and stakeholders as a means of understanding engineering education programs, determining whether program objectives are being met and taking action to make programmatic changes when necessary.Of immediate interest and concern for many engineering educators, is the dramatic change in engineering accreditation requirements reflected in ABET Engineering Criteria 2000. 2With the dual goals of fostering high academic achievement and accountability, ABET has rejected the detailed program description and counting approach to accreditation in favor of a competency-based approach, requiring the establishment of program objectives, measures to assess the achievement of the objectives, and use of assessment data for program improvement. In this new accreditation environment, program assessment will be a critical task for engineering educators. II. PURPOSEThis paper has three purposes. First, the paper describes a unique program assessment approach other programs might emulate, which will in part meet the programmatic assessment requirements addressed in ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 and called for by the Joint Task Force on Engineering Education Assessment. In particular, Criterion 2 calls for engineering programs to systematically develop curriculum and objectives, evaluate the extent to which objectives were achieved, and use the data to improve program effectiveness.2 Th...

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