John Krupczak is a professor of engineering at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. His talk was titled "Progress in the Development of an Engineering Reasoning Assessment for General Education." 

Abstract

Despite the extent to which technology and the products of engineering enable the activities of daily life for most Americans, limited work has been done measuring the degree to which undergraduate students possess a broad understanding of the principles, products, and processes of engineering. Improvements in the measurement of learning gains of engineering majors are being made thanks in part to engineering accreditation criteria advanced under ABET EC 2000. However, methods of determining the degree of technological understanding by the majority of undergraduates who are not engineering students remain underdeveloped. Work will be described concerning an effort to develop an engineering literacy assessment suitable for use with students outside of the STEM disciplines. Initial activity focuses on abilities related to the identification and characterization of systems along with the ability to synthesize systems to achieve a particular function in a given technological domain. Preliminary data from undergraduate non-STEM majors in different institutions will be described.