Guidelines for the final year project assessment in engineering

Abstract

This paper presents an efficient and objective procedure for the outcome-based assessment of engineering final year projects (FYP). The procedure, consisting of 6 steps, can easily be customized for different engineering curricula. A User Guide has been developed to help institutions create their own FYP assessment system. The guide includes the assessment procedure and aids for its implementation. Particularly, a set of FYP-oriented observable descriptors for Tuning outcomes was defined. The end-products of the proposed assessment procedure are a set of assessment reports that the evaluator agent/s must fulfil per milestone, marking the level reached by the student at every descriptor (0: unacceptable, 1: minimum acceptable, 2: good, 3: excellent). These marks are then gathered together in an overall assessment sheet showing, for every learning outcome, the evolution along the assessment milestones of the level reached by the student at any descriptor. This sheet is a very powerful tool for setting the final mark. All assessment agents use the same list of descriptors and the same levels of acquisition, thus improving the consistency, traceability and global quality of the assessment process.