Portfolio Assessment in Engineering

Learning professional skills through exposure to real-world contexts demands sophisticated assessment practices. However, complex and often novel genres can be daunting for undergraduate students. This study examined student perspectives as they engaged in Portfolio assessment for the first time within a core undergraduate engineering unit. 42 students were surveyed (27%) with 11 participating in a follow-up telephone interview. Students rated content derived from their contributions to team projects as the most valuable component of their portfolio in terms of demonstrating the unit learning outcomes and developing the skills and dispositions needed in professional practice. The team structure of many learning opportunities encouraged students to collaborate and to draw on each other as instructional resources. The data indicated it is highly worthwhile for instructors to develop static resources that reduce students' need to contact instructors with trivial questions, though lecturer contact was deemed essential and effective for comprehending more complex tasks.

Problem-Based Learning and Authentic Assessment as an Implementation of Outcomes-Based Education in the Computer Engineering Program of Ateneo de Davao University

The 21st century education challenges educators to expose students to a wide variety of circumstances and problem situations where they are required to apply the skills they have learned. In engineering education, these are mostly limited to simulated scenarios which are devoid of real and actual interactions with the problems in the community. This article aims to describe how problem-based learning pedagogy and authentic assessment are used in the Computer Engineering program of Ateneo de Davao University as an implementation of the outcomes-based education. This is a descriptive & qualitative research that utilizes focus group discussions as a methodology for achieving its objective. This study uses the frame of experiential learning that is problem-driven, community-based, multi-disciplinary, integrative & collaborative. The computer engineering program uses a multi-disciplinary and integrative approach to problem-based learning through the service-learning program of the institution. This provides the students with an opportunity to interact with a community, identify its problems, analyze and create a concrete solution applying their acquired skills. Since the students are engaged with the community's actual and real problems, they will be assessed using authentic assessment mechanisms. Experiential learning, problem-based pedagogy with authentic assessment open doors of opportunities for a more meaningful and relevant computer engineering program.

The Assessment for Career Counseling Skill for Teacher at High School

In Vietnam, career counseling for students after graduating high school has limitations and advancing the career counseling skills of the high school teachers has not been highly assessed. An effort for the factor theory and measure proposal is the base for dealing with the problem. The author carried out a survey of 115 teachers belonging 40 high schools in Vietnam. As a result, the reality of career counseling skills of teachers at high schools is at the average level. This research is the base for enacting policies for the training of career counseling skills at high schools in Vietnam in the future. The result is described in the content of this article.

Capacity Building in Teaching Organisations

Universities must be sensitive to the changing expectations of students and work-life continuum in the 21st century. Improving performance and teaching quality, enhancing learning experience and effectiveness create a more and more demanding environment for the universities, where students require better knowledge. It raises new kinds of needs for quality development. As an answer to the external threats and the internal opportunities concerning quality issues, the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics developed a new strategy, focussing on learning organisation and student satisfaction. We have identified “peer support review' as an essential process for reviewing teaching processes, ideas and identifying “catching mistakes', as well as for improving the quality of the teaching service. We argue that a “culture of peer reviewing' is an important ingredient and a critical factor in order that quality improvement can be achieved.

Personality Traits of Students of Helping and Non-Helping Professions

Personality traits are very important in choosing future profession because most professions require certain skills that are related to certain personality traits. The aim of our research was to determine which personality traits contribute the most to the distinction between the students of different professions, e.g. helping and non-helping professions. On a sample of 356 students, of which 216 study helping professions, Big Five Plus Two (BF+2) personality inventory was applied. For obtained data, the classification accuracies were tested with different combinations of 184 items and 18 subtraits of the BF+2 using Case based reasoning classifier. Results showed that the best accuracy had the set of all 18 subtraits and this set outperformed the classification of every combination of subtraits or items.

The Application of Flipped Classroom in Teaching University Students

Flipped classrooms have been extensively used by many educators all over the world and are being seen as an alternative to the traditional classroom-based teaching-learning practices. As for traditional classrooms, face-to-face learning has not brought the personalization of learning capacity, time, attitude, behavior and interests to learners and has not exposed them to experimental activities. The flipped classrooms, on the other hand, enable students to be flexible in their learning and offer more time to go through videos, lectures posted on the Internet, which helps students to acquire the lessons through online learning systems. Flipped classrooms help create environment for more interaction between learners and instructors/facilitators, especially by creating the face-to-face conversations more interactive. However, teaching using flipped classrooms requires adequate additional resources such as; the effective online learning systems, databases, appropriate learning contents and methods, plan, presentations (in various forms like PowerPoint, word, scrom, video, audio) and most importantly minimum technical knowledge for both learners and instructors to use varieties of tools. This paper presents the construction of an environment supporting students to take part in an online activity before and after face-to-face interaction and organization of experimental teaching with the process of learning in groups based on the model of flipped classrooms to facilitate active learning. The quantitative results at the end of the course showed that the flipped learning is highly preferred and useful pedagogical approach when compared to those traditional methods that fostered better learning attitude and behaviors.

Automated Generation of Course Improvement Plans Using Expert System

To satisfy ABET's continuous improvement criterion, an instructor, teaching a course suggests, at the end of the course, an improvement plan to be implemented when the same course is taught next time. Preparation of such a course improvement plan may be mandatory if a pre-specified target level of students' learning is not attained. Since, manual preparation of a course improvement plan is difficult, an idea of generating it using an expert system is presented. The objective is to make the task of improvement plan preparation easier and enjoyable. The proposed expert system has a set of remedies and a set of rules in a data base. A web-based interface queries the instructor about teaching and assessment tools used in the course. The inference engine selects the most appropriate remedy based on instructor's preferences. A cloud implementation of the expert system has been used to test it for a course.

Teaching Online Computer-Science Courses in LMS and Cloud Environment

The author shares his experiences teaching various online computer-science courses (via the Canvas™ and synchronous web conferencing tools) using state-of-the-art free-license software tools for conducting online virtual labs and numerous students' projects. The labs were designed to help students explore modern, sophisticated techniques in several areas of computer science: computer-system analysis and design, programming in C/C++ and Java, software quality assurance, data communication in networking systems, computer security, system simulation and modeling, numerical analysis, image processing, multimedia applications, Web development, and database design and management. All the online courses include “warm-up” exercises and lab-based projects that provide students with knowledge, instructions, and hands-on experience, and that motivate them in selecting topics for technology overviews and research. To concentrate mostly on the students' hands-on training, the “flipped classroom” pedagogy and individual or team tutoring were used in the online classes. The preventive strategies on plagiarism and cheating among students were developed and successfully implemented in the virtual classroom using the Cloud environment.

Evaluating Engineering Students' Perceptions

The focus of this research study is to evaluate engineering graduates' performance on team-based learning practices in engineering education course. Team based learning (TBL) is an effective approach, which emphasizes active learning in a collaborative task. In an engineering curriculum, students are encouraged to develop skills around TBL that helps to enhance graduate employability opportunities. This paper presents an exploratory analysis of evaluating engineering graduates' performance in practising TBL at a postgraduate study level. The cohort of students that participated in this study were primarily postgraduate engineering students at Deakin University.

Evaluating Student Perceptions in Peer to Peer Learning and Assessment Practices in Design Based Learning Environment

Considering the past decade, the changes involved in learning and teaching have been in terms of strategies, methods and practices to learning and teaching; assessment method; interface between a teacher and student; communication and feedback; self-reflective practices and designing pro-industry curriculum. For all the stakeholders involved, it becomes vital to know the student perception about the learning and teaching. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the perception of the student experience on peer to peer learning and assessment. Issues related peer to peer learning has been identified based on the student response to a survey conducted at the end of the unit. The purpose of the paper is also to serve as a medium to contribute to the existing knowledge base on peer to peer learning and assessment in design/project based learning. The outcome of the paper is to review the existing literature, innovate a new approach and suggest a mutually acceptable solution to the issues related to peer to peer learning and assessment.