2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In the landscape of engineering education, rubrics serve a dual purpose—they function as vital tools for streamlining instructor evaluation and provide indispensable guidelines for students to establish and meet expectations. Despite this dual role, there is a potential drawback: the unintentional hindrance of critical thinking skills in students. This complexity is particularly accentuated in senior design courses, crucial for students transitioning to academia or industry. To address this challenge, the paper proposes an innovative experiment within the Electrical and Computer Engineering senior design capstone. The study involves providing a rubric for the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) while deliberately omitting it for the Critical Design Review (CDR) presentation. Through guided workshops, students construct internal rubrics, fostering effective data presentation practices. Ongoing research aims to validate the hypothesis that removing rubric dependency stimulates critical thinking and enhances information selection for presentations. The ultimate objective is to empower students to design personalized rubrics, promoting adaptability and effective communication. The paper advocates for reconsidering the prevailing use of rubrics in students' project presentations, highlighting the benefits of a more flexible and student-centric approach.