Multi assessment approach to major projects

All engineering students completing the final year of manufacturing and mechanical engineering at Swinburne University of Technology must undertake a comprehensive final year project encompassing many areas of research, design, analysis, or management, often integrating many of these aspects. It is often the assessment of the project, not the pursuit of it by the student that presents difficulties particularly with respect to bias by academic assessors. Hence it is difficult to compare and quantify the final results of a cohort of projects resulting from many different supervisors. In an attempt to make the assessment process free from bias; a multi valiant set of assessment procedures have been introduced. In all seven steps are involved in the assessment procedure, only one of which is directly dependent on the supervisors, thus reducing their influence on the final grade. The results of this assessment procedure have produced a spread in the series of grades or results, whereas in previous years an obvious bias was seen in relation to the supervisor student relationship. The current assessment procedure has been shown to be bias-free with regards to high or low grades and was a reflection of students' grades in other subjects. Overall, there seems to be satisfaction by both staff and the student cohort in the overall final marks achieved.