Assessing growth of engineering students using e-portfolios: A MDL-based approach

Overall premise of the work presented is to study the potential of e-portfolios as a viable mechanism for student reflection and assessment of growth on attributes that are part of becoming a World Class Engineer. These attributes relate to becoming: 1) Aware of the World, 2) Solidly Grounded, 3) Technically Broad, 4) Innovative, 5) Effective in Team Operations, and 6) Effective in Leadership Positions. Our project team has collected data from engineering student subjects who were enrolled in two different courses, and at various stages of their education. These portfolios were created by students intending to major in a wide range of engineering disciplines. Oneway ANOVAs and post-hoc tests were utilized to examine differences between the engineering discipline and students' class standing (i.e., first-year students, sophomores, juniors, and seniors). Overall, our analysis indicates that our rubrics based on Alexander's Model of Domain Learning (MDL)^2-4 are effective in assessing student development as captured in their e-portfolios.