Using Blogs for Authentic Assessment of Project Based Modules

Blogs used for education can capture snippets of an engineering project life and arrange information to show progression. Blogs teach students about writing techniques, online publishing and presentation, and proper Internet etiquette, which most students will use in future careers. More importantly, it helps to understand whether students have been able to appreciate a design framework such as CDIO. Many project based modules in Singapore Polytechnic have been designed using the CDIO framework. These modules teach students to go through the CDIO process during the project cycle and to appreciate the various stages. Facilitators have a requirement to monitor the design process at every stage and possibly at different iterations. Rubrics are designed to assess student teams on the process rather than the end product hence it is important for facilitators to have a snapshot of every stage of the project to assess and give feedback effectively. Using blogs, helps facilitators to carry out authentic assessments and align students to the design framework used as the project progresses. Blogs encourage community building in which both the bloggers and commenters exchange opinions and ideas. It also promotes open dialogue among student teams by encouraging them to comment on each other’s posts and give constructive feedback. It also serves as a platform to give students to express their content in their own way and hence boost creativity. Facilitators can also bring together a group of content experts for a given unit of study for students to network and conference with on a blog. Blogs exhibit, organize, and protect student work as digital portfolios. As older entries are archived, developing skills and progress may be analyzed more conveniently. Furthermore, as students recognize their efforts will be published, they are more motivated to produce better writing. In this paper, a module called Engineering & Design which uses blogs as part of project assessments will be presented. The paper will also discuss a structure given to students to help scaffold the blog with posts with appropriate content. The rubrics to assess these blogs will also be shown. Examples of blog entries showcasing the different CDIO stages and how student teams were able to steer their project design though continuous feedback and iterations for a successful completion will be demonstrated.

Proceedings of the 13th International CDIO Conference in Calgary, Canada, June 18-22 2017