2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

It has long been known that there is much to be learned from failures in engineering. Engineering content aside, we can also learn from the primary causes of these failures. A 1976 study by Matousek and Schneider involving 800 cases of structural failure resulting in 504 deaths and 592 injuries found that when engineers were at fault, 36% of the failures were due to insufficient knowledge on behalf of the engineers. In most circumstances, this source of error should be avoidable. Students in engineering and technology are exposed to a vast range of topics in their given discipline making complete mastery difficult. As instructors it is important to know that it is unrealistic to expect that 100% of the students leaving the classroom will be well versed in all topics covered. It is possible, however, to expect each student to have a strong grasp on which concepts they fully understand. Or more importantly, to understand where they should seek assistance to potentially avoid failures due to insufficient knowledge.
To help students practice self-assessment of knowledge, over the last four semesters I have transformed my courses to encourage students to take ownership of their learning. This self-assessment of knowledge is evaluated through exams by modifying them to include an option for students to evaluate their own understanding on course concepts by opting out of a question they find particularly difficult. For example, an exam may have five questions, but it is up to the student to determine which of the four they understand the best and select which problems they want to be evaluated on. This also allows for semi-individualized reiteration of material that is deemed difficult by students. Since doing this, I have seen an increase in scores in my course level assessments evaluating student mastery of course learning objectives through grades on homework, projects and exams. It is also evident that different students feel confident on different topics, with no single question always being skipped by all students, indicating that students do not all find a single topic to be the most difficult within a given course. The hope is this awareness will continue with them as they move into the workforce. As students are better able to fully understand their strengths and weakness they will know when they should seek additional expertise on a project and hopefully avoid failures due to an overestimation of their individual knowledge.