2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Illuminating engineering is an interdisciplinary field taught within undergraduate and graduate architectural engineering programs, as well as in design, architecture, and technical universities and in professional certificate programs worldwide. This study presents progress toward developing an illuminating engineering concept inventory to measure student learning and to guide instructional improvement in foundational lighting courses. Concept inventories are validated instruments developed by discipline‑based education researchers to assess student knowledge and misconceptions. The pilot illuminating engineering concept inventory drew from IES Lighting Library concepts and long‑standing curriculum content in the University of Colorado Boulder’s architectural engineering introductory lighting course. The test included fourteen multiple‑choice and short‑answer questions assessing student proficiency with the identified technical concepts. The instrument also included 22 Likert-scale questions to measure student attitudes such as awareness, self‑confidence, and perceptions of the profession. During Spring 2025, second‑year architectural engineering students enrolled in an introductory illumination course completed the pilot concept inventory at the start and end of the semester under IRB‑approved human subjects research. Results show that students acquired accurate and working knowledge for half of the technical concepts and demonstrated significant positive shifts in awareness, self‑efficacy, and self‑confidence regarding illuminating engineering practice. Future work will refine the concept inventory and employ it for ongoing evaluation of active learning strategies in introductory illuminating engineering education.