Assessing and Grading

1. Assessing and Grading Pamela Dexter, EPICS High Tammy Watson, Agawam High School

2. Grading Team and Individual Work • Students produce artifacts that can be assessed during their EPICS experience • Design Notebooks • Reflections • Self-assessments • Presentations • Reports • Project documentation • Delivered projects • Manuals or other documentations with project

3. Assessing Team Work • Teams are assessed • Project planning • Thorough planning and accomplishments • Customer/Partner feedback • Presentations and team reports • Short presentations can be efficient and effective • Individuals are assessed • Notebooks • Written Reflections • Presentations • Accomplishments

4. Team Roles: Students • Team Leader/Co-Leaders – Organization of the team and project tasks • Project leaders– If you have multiple projects you may need to break the leadership down into project leaders • Liaison - primary contact with the community partner • Financial officer - manages team’s budget • Webmaster – If your team would like to create a webpage you might want to assign a webmaster

5. Accountability • Short tasks allow team members to be accountable • Charting/organizing tasks • Keeps projects moving and shifting resources as needed • Visiting deadlines - what is due this week? • Prevent delays that span several weeks

6. Keeping a Design Notebook – The Purdue EPICS Approach Using Notebooks as Legal Documents

7. Individual Documentation: Design Notebook • Bound, composition style notebook • All entries should be in ink • Tape, staple, or glue any sheets that you want to include in the notebook

8. Individual Documentation: Design Notebook • Record of your individual work • All work should be in or referenced in your notebook • Actual entries • References to other documentation • Notebook is your thinkpad • Record thoughts, ideas, research, etc.

9. Individual Documentation: Notebook Content • Record any thoughts you may have about your project, no matter how strange it may seem • When doing research, site where any information you acquired came from • Explanations of design decisions are essential

10. Individual Documentation: Design Notebook • Entries showing work accomplished on the project • Types of information: • Results of research • Calculations • Drawings • Test procedures • Test setups • Results

11. Individual Documentation: Design Notebook • Entries showing evidence of the design process • Types of Information: • Plans for project work • Identification of tasks • Distribution of work • Design decisions • Problems encountered and overcome

12. Individual Documentation: Design Notebook • Entries showing in-depth thinking about the issues related to the project, your team, the community, or the needs you are addressing • Some regular reflection activities (as assigned by teacher)

13. Individual Documentation: Design Notebook University Example

14. Individual Documentation: High School Design Notebook Example

15. Design Process • See Handout – Students should know where they are in the design process.

16. Team Communication • The team should communicate with their project partner consistently • Project partner memos (see handout for example) could be graded as part of the team grade.

17. Evaluating Individuals on Group Work • How individuals contribute to the team can be evaluated by you (the teacher) and/or through peer evaluations by other team members. *See handout of an EPICS High example of a group work evaluation form

18. Self Assessment • See examples from EPICS High

19. Written Reflections • See University example reflection questions including a final written reflection