Assessment

The various assessment methods present in this module are summarized below.

Written exam

An exam is always taken individually and written on paper. During an exam, students need to demonstrate that they have acquired the knowledge and skills that are desired for completing the module component. To provide insight into the questions that will be asked during an exam, example exams might be provided during lectures and/or on Canvas.

Assignment

Assignments are executed individually or in small groups. Assignments can be graded by marks or a ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ assessment. Passing an exam might be a pre-condition for having the possibility to hand in an assignment or the other way around.

Project assessment

The project assignment is an integrated group assignment in which students need to show that the acquired knowledge is applied adequately. The assessment as a group component and an individual components, the individual compontents may vary per educational program (see assessment tools). As the different students have different backgrounds, different interests play a role in the assessment of the project (see rubric).

Peer review

The intelligence for listening, understanding and coping. Working in multi-disciplinary groups is not easy. To be able to improve your personal skills on multi-disciplinary work it is important to get feedback from your group members on how they experience you as a group member and your contribution to the group work. In this module we use non-anonymous peer review. This enables you to assess your group members on several aspects of cooperation. Each project member will receive feedback twice, halfway during the module and before the project exam. Your individual feedback scores give you (and your group members) the possibility to start a discussion on how to improve personal skills and group interaction. The results will be taken into account at grading your project assignment.

Individual oral exam (ME)

The ME students will have an individual oral exam on their role as specialist in the project. For some specializations, extra assignments will be given during the course. During the exam ME students discuss their specific engineering solution, and the integration with other specialization tracks, with a team of experts using the group document and software tools.

Project exam

The project exam is a meeting during which a project group presents the project results in an oral presentation and is questioned by at least two examiners. Ideally, the tutor of the project group is one of the examiners.

Note: The project assignment is realistic to such an extent that the company that provides the assignment has an interest in the results. This, however, does not imply that the final product is the major basis for the assessment. In fact, the reasoning behind the product, argumentation of design decisions, the decisions and their mutual relations are important topics in the assessment. This ‘academic’ result will also be decisive for the resulting mark. In an extreme situation this implies that a ‘bad’ product might not necessarily lead to an unsatisfactory grade. It also implies that a ‘good’ product is not guaranteed to pass the project.

Rubric

The rubric used for the project is displayed below. You can also have a look at the assessment template used by the tutor and examiner during the project exam.

Rubric

Deficiencies

The project needs to be completed with a sufficient mark. When (part of) a project group turns out not to have finished the project successfully, the following situations can occur:

  1. If the result is univocally insufficient, the student/group has failed the project and thus the entire module.
  2. If only specific subjects in the project results are unsatisfactory, the examiners can offer the possibility to ‘repair’ this part by handing in a supplement. Per supplement only one subject is treated; a maximum of two supplements may be handed in to repair the project. If more than two subjects are insufficient, the students involved fail the project (and thus the module). The exact content of the supplement and the organizational settlement is determined by the examiners. In general, a supplement needs to be handed in within 2 weeks after the start of the next quartile. The examiners assess the supplement(s). When these supplements are satisfactory, they can be graded with a 6 at the most, and contribute to the final mark accordingly.
  3. If the individual oral exam (ME students only) results are unsatisfactory, the examiners can offer the possibility to ‘repair’ this part by handing in a supplement. The content of the supplement and the organizational settlement is determined by the examiners. When these supplements are satisfactory, they can be graded with a 6 at the most, and contribute to the final mark accordingly. This supplement does not count in the maximum of two stated in the previous item.
  4. In exceptions, the examiners can – in consultation with the examination committee – determine individual arrangements. These arrangements are no basis for other students to establish rights.

For the module components, the rules of the responsible educational programs apply. These rules can be found in the student charters of the educational programs.