An Anonymous Electronic Journal System ;Program Assessment Tool And Monday Morning Quarterback

Abstract

During the past ten years, The Ohio State University's College of Engineering has moved from a series of separate freshman courses for engineering orientation, engineering graphics, and engineering problem solving with computer programming to a dual offering of course sequences in the Introduction to Engineering (IE) Program and the Freshman Engineering Honors (FEH) Program. Ongoing assessment and regular evaluations of these programs are essential to maintain quality, ensure uniformity across sections, provide for feedback, and supply freshness. A key component of the assessments are the answers by students to evaluation inquiries collected frequently, regularly, and anonymously along with their comments, suggestions, and opinions. The constant cycle of self-assessment has enabled the Freshman Engineering Honors Program to continually evolve to quickly meet the needs of students. This present work describes an anonymous electronic journal system as it implemented and employed in the FEH Program as a near real time assessment tool.

1. Introduction and Background

In response to a national concern in the early 1990s about poor retention of students in engineering combined with a real, or some would say critical, need for more engineers, The Ohio State University (OSU) worked with nine other schools to form the Gateway Engineering Education Coalition. This need for engineers was and currently is driven by society's ever- increasing consumption of technology. The Coalition, led by Drexel University, was established as a result of the creation of an Engineering Education Coalitions program by the National Science Foundation. These schools agreed to adopt or adapt Drexel's E4 program1-2 for freshmen and sophomores which put engineering "up-front" and specifically included hands-on labs and incorporated design projects. The Gateway pilot program, as OSU's adaptation was then called, consisted of three 3-course sequences taken concurrently, one in engineering graphics and fundamentals, one in physics & engineering mechanics, and one in mathematics.

The OSU Gateway pilot was first offered in the 1993-94 school year to new first quarter freshmen who had calculus in high school and who placed into advanced calculus by the University’s math placement test. Over the course of the first few Gateway pilots, both the course content and range of offerings were varied to determine which of several approaches might prove most effective in meeting the goals outlined by the Gateway Coalition. By 1996 the

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright Ó 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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