ASA: Using Assessment Information to Enhance Students' Academic Progress

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester MA

Investigators

Abstract

The project is adapting assessment material to improve the design of courses and to provide formative feedback to students. Using an existing course-based assessment system, the project is identifying students in need of remediation based on their performance on specific questions on exams in previous courses. Each of these questions is linked to specific learning outcomes so that the remediation becomes very specific. The projects is developing a remediation program for several Electrical Engineering courses to provide targeted instruction for these specific needs using approaches matched to the student's individual learning style. The team also is developing a secure web site to enable students and advisors to monitor the student's progress. In evaluating their program, the investigators will compare improvements in the performance of the students who use the remediation material to a matched control group who do not. They plan to evaluate the utilization of and the user's reaction to the web-base remedial material. They plan to describe their results of their study at appropriate engineering education conferences and to make the material available on a website and on a CD ROM.