2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Existing studies confirm that people of color, women, and rural students are underrepresented in engineering and that those groups who are in engineering report lower levels of self confidence than their peers. However, little research has been done to examine the effect of specific assessment and reporting practices - for example, the publishing of medians - on these students' reported level of confidence. This paper aims to fill that gap by focusing on how underrepresented students describe the effect of different assessment and reporting practices on their level of confidence.

In order to explore how current assessment practices affect underrepresented students from a holistic perspective, both engineering students and faculty were interviewed. Interviews were conducted with 3 engineering professors and 10 engineering students from five different institutions across the United States. The variation in assessment practices included some institutions that published class grade statistics (medians, means etc) and some that did not, and institutions that practiced mastery-based learning and others that did not. The interviews suggested three main ways that assessment practices may reduce confidence and undercut learning of underrepresented engineering students. Here, the terms assessment and reporting practices do not refer to a specific type of assessment practice. Rather, the researchers focused on using qualitative methods to understand how students felt about assessment and the way they receive feedback (eg. tests, letter grades, class statistics, hands-on projects) in broad terms to better inform future research studies.

Engineering schools are increasingly trying to increase diversity and improve retention of students from underrepresented backgrounds. However, if assessment practices have a negative impact on confidence in engineering, and if those assessment practices don’t represent substantive differences in mastery of engineering principles and skills, the cost may be in diminished persistence by otherwise qualified students, especially underrepresented students. Thus, this research can inform assessment decisions in ways that support better outcomes for underrepresented students.