2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Building a Methodology to Connect Course Design with Student Outcomes: A Framework for Engineering Education

Presented at Analyzing and Evaluating Curricula

Course design shapes student experiences in online engineering courses, yet translating design artifacts into analyzable data remains a methodological challenge. This full methods paper introduces a systematic and adaptable framework that operationalizes an adapted course quality scorecard into four analytic indices representing engagement, scaffolding, accessibility, and alignment. Behavioral data from institutional learning platforms provide observable proxies of enacted instructional design, complementing the scorecard and enabling triangulation between automated behavioral signals and human design assessments. A demonstrative case study illustrates the pipeline and identifies boundary conditions that influence the interpretability of the indices, including class size, assessment structure, and course format effects. The framework emphasizes transparency, reproducibility, and adaptability, offering a methodological foundation for design-informed investigation of student outcomes across diverse institutional contexts.

Authors

Jobin Varughese http://orcid.org/https://0009-0002-9322-4179 Texas A&M University [biography]

Jobin Varughese is a doctoral student in the College of Engineering at Texas A&M University, where he also serves as Senior Educational Data Analyst at the Center for Teaching Excellence. He holds an M.S. in Management Information Systems with an emphasis in Data Science from Oklahoma State University and a B.S. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Christ University. His research draws on learning analytics, AI in education, and human-computer interaction to observe, build, and study systems that learn how people learn. In this work, he partners closely with faculty, instructional staff, and students — believing that the most meaningful scholarship emerges not from research alone, but from collaborations with the people closest to the learning experience.
Dr. Gibin Raju http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2559-6931 Texas A&M University [biography]

Gibin Raju is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Engineering Education in the Department of Multidisciplinary Engineering at Texas A&M University. He earned his Ph.D. in Engineering Education from the University of Cincinnati and is a recipient of the ASEE Educational Research and Methods (ERM) Division Apprentice Faculty Grant. His research focuses on transformative learning, creativity, critical thinking skills, spatial skills, and engineering design, with particular attention to cognitive stress, cognitive load, and STEM accessibility. By integrating these strategies into a holistic framework, Dr. Raju enhances workforce development, strengthens engineering pathways, and broadens participation in STEM fields. His work equips educators with tools to personalize instruction and foster professional identity, ultimately preparing future engineers to thrive in a rapidly evolving global landscape.
Dr. Yeonji Jung Texas A&M University [biography]

Dr. Yeonji Jung is an Assistant Professor of Learning Technologies and Performance Systems at Texas A&M University. Her research examines, designs, and supports meaningful collaborative discourse through analytics-informed approaches.
Dr. Sunay Palsole Texas A&M University [biography]

Dr. Palsole is Assistant Vice Chancellor for Remote Engineering Education at Texas A&M University, and has been involved in academic technology for over 20 years. He helped establish the Engineering Studio for Advanced Instruction & Learning (eSAIL),

Download paper (400 KB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session

For those interested in:

engineering
Faculty
Graduate
information technology
undergraduate