Assessing Professional Skill Development in Capstone Design Courses

The capstone engineering design course provides students an opportunity to create a product or process as well as the opportunity to improve professional skills and workplace behaviors. The latter are often difficult to teach and assess in a project-based course. To encourage students to be aware of, to prepare for, and to engage in project-based professional skill development, the Transferable Integrated Design Engineering Education (TIDEE) consortium developed the Integrated Design Engineering Assessment and Learning System (IDEALS) that includes course materials, assessment instruments and companion scoring rubrics that target professional development. In the IDEALS assessment instruments, professional skills include professional responsibility and an ability to pursue lifelong learning related to twelve specific abilities/attributes that are technical, interpersonal, and individual in nature. The IDEALS professional skills assessments consist of a progression of two formative assessments (Professional Development Planning and Professional Development Progress) and one summative assessment (Professional Development Achieved) that are used to prepare for, monitor, and summarize student professional development during the capstone course. A companion instructional module and scoring rubric is provided with each assessment instrument in an instructor-friendly web-based format that helps the instructor guide student development. The professional skills assessment instruments were piloted at six colleges and universities throughout the United States that differ with respect to size, geographic location, student demographic, and public or private status. The results of these pilot implementations, inter-rater agreement studies, student perceptions, and faculty perceptions of the assessment instruments are included in this paper. Results indicate that use of the instruments is perceived by students as value-added within the capstone program, are perceived by instructors as helpful in monitoring student growth as well as in program assessment, and show sufficient scoring consistency for reliable use.