2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As engineering education and related research evolve, it is also important for assessment tools and research methods to evolve. This Work in Progress paper focuses on evaluating student knowledge surveys in conjunction with instructor knowledge surveys about student learning and a validated intellectual humility scale. Knowledge surveys have been used as an indirect, self-report measure of assessing knowledge mastery within courses and across engineering programs to triangulate direct assessment results and inform continuous improvement of teaching and learning, but they have yet to be leveraged in other ways. For example, in engineering education student knowledge survey results are rarely compared to an external perspective nor combined with validated instruments. In this study, knowledge surveys (pre- and post-) were completed by both students and instructors in a 3rd year undergraduate Control Systems and Instrumentation course and used in combination with the limitations owning intellectual humility scale (Haggard et. al.) to gauge the accuracy of perceived growth of learning by students. Student responses were compared against the instructors’ initial expectations for student knowledge in the context of the departmental curriculum as well as growth targets upon course completion. Our guiding research questions were (1) What do knowledge surveys reveal about student perceptions in their knowledge compared with instructor perceptions?” and (2) “What insights do we gain in comparing student intellectual humility scale results with their knowledge surveys?" Preliminary findings for research question 1 show that student self-assessments are generally higher than instructor expectations and targets in both pre- and post- surveys which indicates that there are knowledge areas where major gaps still exist in students' perceptions of growth. The gap is greater at the end of the course, indicating that after a preliminary course experience they overestimate their knowledge gains. Instructors can leverage this data in future course iterations to manage student perceptions by providing broader context in targeted knowledge areas. While findings for research question 2 did not show a significant relationship between student perception of self-knowledge and their intellectual humility, this is likely due to limitations of this study design. Incorporation of intellectual humility and assessment thereof in engineering education holds promise because intellectual humility is associated with a mastery approach to learning that fuels lifelong learning and is a characteristic employers value in engineers.