A novel assessment of mechanical engineering design skills

We transformed an introductory mechanical engineering (ME) project course guided by theories of learning and evaluated the impact of this transformation. The course is the first opportunity for students to make design decisions to meet requirements and build something. In this Part I paper we present the development of a new instrument, the “design practices assessment” (DPA), to measure how well the students learned the intended design skills. The assessment instrument is based on the specific design practices and their entailing decisions an engineer makes. It is a valid way to measure the mastery of mechanical engineering design practices and hence can serve as a template for assessment in other engineering design courses. We present the theoretical framework underlying the DPA, then explain the structure and development, followed by the explanation of the scoring system, measures of validity, and results from its use to measure student learning.