Assessing engineering competencies

Low-stakes assessment is supposed to improve educational practice by providing feedback to different actors in educational systems. However, the process of assessment from design to the point of a final impact on student learning outcomes is complex and diverse. It is hard to identify reasons for substandard achievement on assessments, let alone the means that should be undertaken to improve the educational setting. Furthermore, it is difficult to show a causal link between educational reforms and change in test achievement over time. This paper examines the potential impact that low-stakes testing initiatives have in engineering higher education on educational improvement by examining two case studies. It discusses how the design of constructs and particular assessment conditions may foster or limit educational improvement and outlines conditions to ensure that low-stakes assessment designs achieve educational improvement.Keywords: assessmenteducational improvementengineering competencieshigher education AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to express their gratitude to Andreas Saniter, Daniel Edwards, Georg Spöttl and Karine Tremblay for feedback on the earlier versions of this manuscript. They would also like to thank Hamish Coates for encouraging collaboration between ACER and ITB.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.FundingFederal Ministry for Education and Research (Germany) [grant number 01PK11012A].Notes1 AHELO and KOM-ING frameworks are depicted and described in a reduced version. For the sake of brevity the normative parts of the models have been omitted

Academic achievement · Christian ministry · Educational assessment · Engineering ethics · Gratitude · Higher education · Mathematics education · Normative · Pedagogy · Political science · Standardized test · Computer Science · Engineering · Engineering Education and Curriculum Development · Higher Education Learning Practices · Psychology · Social Psychology · Student Assessment and Feedback

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