2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A key student outcome for ABET accreditation is the ability to function effectively on a team. While this objective is often assessed in capstone, senior level courses, first year course can serve as a cornerstone, developing basic skills in teamwork such as the ability to be interdependent in tasks, the ability to share responsibility for outcomes, and the ability to work together as a single entity with shared goals and values. Team projects in first year courses can also be powerful in helping first-year students develop community and can particularly be powerful for first-generation students that may lack the cultural capital of their continuing generation peers. The goals of student learning in teamwork can work against typical classroom dynamics where grades are assigned individually. As such, students can feel that team-based assessments are unfair. Students can also feel a lack of motivation towards team projects that seem like merely classroom exercises. In this work, we seek to overcome these dynamics using a combination of service learning and contract grading in a first-year mechanical engineering course in computer programming and instrumentation. In this large course of more than 100 students, student teams of 5-6 students work on a service learning project to support local 4-H and K-12 education programs. The student teams develop educational materials to teach high school aged youth to build and program robotics systems using the Arduino microcontroller. These project are made publicly available to youth via a class website. Assessment of these projects is performed using contract grading. In this contract grading, teams design a set of criteria for what a high quality product would look like. These criteria include goals for the code and construction of the robotics system, the instructional materials developed, and, also, the quality of their teamwork and support of each other. At the end of the semester, teams are required to assess their performance based on the contract grading rubric they create. A public-facing and externally-motivated service project allows students to see beyond individual goals such as grades. Contract grading allows groups to take ownership of their projects and assessment in the light of these external goals. In this paper, improvements in project quality and feedback from community partners and students will be presented. The challenges of contract grading, such as assuring fair and equitable evaluation, will also be discussed.