Using Rubrics to Assess the Development of CDIO Syllabus Personal and Professional Skills and Attributes at the 2.X.X. Level

The Department of Aerospace Engineering at the United States Naval Academy joined the CDIO Initiative in July 2003. The Naval Academy already emphasized many of the skills in the CDIO Syllabus, such as ethics, leadership, teamwork, systems thinking, and communications that are part of design-build projects, integral components of a CDIO program. What was lacking was the overall framework for developing a curriculum consistent with our goals and one that could be used to guide outcomes assessment. The CDIO syllabus provided that framework.

This paper describes the process of developing and implementing the CDIO syllabus personal and professional skills and attributes (2.x.x.). We first completed the stakeholder survey to determine the level of understanding desired for each of the CDIO Syllabus topics. Following that, we completed a benchmark survey of our courses to identify where we introduce, teach, and use each of the topics in our CDIO Syllabus. In the next step we evaluate student and program performance in each of the topics. This year we are focusing particularly on the personal and professional skills and attributes (2.x.x). In the courses where we have identified that we teach or use the 2.x.x topics, we are asking each faculty member to evaluate student’s performance on the topics by answering a set of questions pertaining to the 2.x.x topics. These questions are applied to course homework, projects, exams, and class participation.

The CDIO Initiative also provides assessment tools necessary for the successful development and continuous improvement of our program. However, there was a need to create valid and reliable rubrics to assess the specific personal and professional skills and attributes that are most highly valued in the USNA Aerospace Engineering program, which were identified during the process of syllabus adaptation. Developing the assessment rubrics involved, first, identifying criteria for judging the achievement of 2.x.x. level skills and attributes; second, creating scales related to each criterion to guide the evaluation of students’ achievement of the desired skills and attributes; and third, validating the criteria and scales so that standards of achievement could be set.

This process resulted in valid and reliable assessments rubrics that provide information used to guide the continuous improvement of the Aerospace Engineering program.