Work-in-Progress: Individual Capstone Assessment Using Z-Scores

Capstone courses and the associated projects are the culminating learning experience for many engineering programs. Students are placed in teams with an assigned project that simulates working in an industrial setting. Grading individual students within these teams can be challenging for an instructor because many of the course deliverables are the product of a team effort. A grading scheme has been developed, over several years of capstone courses, that assists in grading the individual student relative to the team's success on the project and the individual team member's contributions as assessed by the team. This process uses a variety of survey questions related to the project where each team member rates themselves and their peers over a 10-point scale. Stipulations are placed on the rating to ensure that students provide a range in the assessment for the group members. The survey scores are normalized using the z-score in an attempt to remove individual grading variances between each team member. Each student's individual grade is calculated from the team average grade, as assessed by the instructor, and the individual's z-score calculated from the survey responses. This paper will show the developed survey questions, how the z-score is calculated, how the z-score is combined with the team assessed average score to provide an individual grade for a student, and how this calculated grade compares to the instructor's qualitative observation of individual success within the course. This method provides a means for differentiating the high performers on a team from the low performers (when a majority of the assignments and assessments are group related) and also eliminates the need for an instructor to provide grades on pure qualitative observation.