WIP: Adaptive comparative judgement as a tool for assessing first-year engineering design projects

Abstract

Design projects are an important part of many first-year engineering programs. The desire to employ holistic assessment strategies to student work with open-ended and divergent responses has been widely noted in the literature. Holistic strategies can provide insight into the role of qualities (e.g., professional constructs) that are not typically conducive to standard assessment rubrics. Adaptive Comparative Judgement (ACJ) is an assessment approach that is used to assess design projects holistically. The assessment of projects using ACJ can be carried out by experts or students to scaffold their learning experience. This Work-inProgress paper explores the use and benefits of ACJ for assessing design projects specifically focusing on first-year engineering students and educators. Further, conference attendees will be provided the opportunity throughout the conference to engage with the ACJ software to experience how this system can work in practice for assessing student design projects.