2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

At Ohio State University, Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) major sophomores take a numerical methods course. Having been introduced to basic MATLAB syntax and programming concepts as part of the general first year engineering curriculum, in the sophomore level MSE course, they deepen MATLAB skills and learn to apply additional statistics and numerical tools as they relate to the rest of the MSE curriculum.
Assessing programming work at this introductory level is difficult, because students are tempted to overuse external resources such as peers and large-language models for any assignments that are taken home, instead of taking enough time to fully engage and work through the assignment. Meanwhile, in-class exams don’t allow time for the students to write and test sections of code or otherwise apply a variety of their skills and knowledge to explore and explain a complex topic. To allow for deeper assessments, here, we design exams with take-home and oral portions, based on successful implementation of a similar strategy in the first-year engineering curriculum. This format provides time for students to think through and work out the assigned problems at home, while also incentivizing them to understand the material well enough to defend it in the subsequent in-person oral exam. When switching to this format from in-class or fully take-home assessments, one crucial new challenge is in designing an oral assessment portion that can be fairly and consistently implemented at scale (in this case, with the help of teaching assistants).
The current paper details the design of the written and oral portions of the assessments and the strategy to implement them in the Spring semester 2026. The oral examination questions and format are created with special focus on 1. making them approachable for students who may not have experience with oral exams (for example, by having brief one-on-one discussions during computer lab time) and 2. maintaining fairness by using strict, detailed rubrics that are well aligned to course goals and can be applied consistently by different proctors. Example assignments, rubrics, training materials for teaching assistants, and logistics are reviewed and contrasted with typical prior assessments. The plans to assess the effectiveness of these strategies in future work are also discussed.