This project seeks to assess student competency and growth in response to exposure and instruction in a number of content and skill areas. The content and skill areas selected for study are those building blocks upon which advanced concepts depend for their complete understanding. These building blocks tend to be thematic elements in engineering education and form trajectories through a given curriculum. This project measures student competency in a specific skill area using pre-instruction and post-instruction assessments each time a student encounters the skill as they progress through two years of an undergraduate engineering curriculum. This longitudinal study is also designed to identify the strategies students use outside of traditional instruction to develop competency in key areas. The data are also being analyzed to determine common failure modes and misconceptions which in turn can be used to improve instructional content and delivery and to design specific interventions to improve student competency. The rubrics and methodologies used throughout this project are being freely disseminated to interested engineering schools.
