Infrastructure for Continuous Assessment of Retained Relevant Knowledge

Over the past decade, engineering programs nation-wide have devoted significant effort towards measuring educational objectives in the style recommend by ABET Engineering Curriculum 2000 to monitor and improve program effectiveness. In many cases the collection and interpretation of this data has taken place in a labor intensive ad hoc fashion which limits utility of the collected data to drive curricular or pedagogic improvement. Herein, we present a data collection infrastructure designed to measure success in retaining specific knowledge area topics deemed critical by each engineering discipline’s professional society. Where possible, assessment points are deployed at that start of courses that use knowledge topics developed in prerequisite core courses. This infrastructure allows evaluation of retention of expertise, allows assessment of differences in outcomes between learning pathways, and is less subject to instructor, course format, or other bias. Equally important, this infrastructure requires minimal resources post-deployment yet collects critical program data while also providing immediate feedback to students and course instructors regarding the preparation of students as they enter courses that allows for focused review and reinforcement of knowledge areas not retained due to variation in preparation.