Mini workshop - A strategy for assessing student work on open-ended problems

Assessing student work on realistic, openended problems is challenging when multiple solutions of varying quality can be expected. A balance needs to be sought between school-like and engineering-practice-like feedback and assessment of student work if an instructor wishes to capitalize on the authenticity of a problem. This workshop will work with the ideas of authentic assessment for open-ended engineering problems – the idea that not only the problem but also the feedback and assessment strategy can reflect engineering practice. Participants will learn about a four dimensional feedback and assessment model being used with ModelEliciting Activities, a special form of open-ended problem. They will learn to apply the feedback and assessment model to sample student work and how the model can be more generally applied to open-ended problems. Index Terms – open-ended problem solving, modeling, model-eliciting activities, assessment, feedback