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Assessment Overview and Marks 4

Submission Notes - USQ Policy 5

Part B – Process Evaluation 15

Reference List 17

Table 1: Report 2 tasks 4

Table 2: An example of the final Technical Report (Part A) structure 13

This report represents 20% of the total marks for the course. This equates to approximately 30 hours of effort per team member and 150-240 hours per team. Your report should reflect this effort. This course and assessment is based on a Problem Based Learning philosophy derived from Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (Problem based learning n.d.; Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory n.d.). Consequently the onus is on the student to actively engage in the course by collaborating within a team, building on the team's collective prior knowledge, to solve a problem through collective research. It is therefore essential that each individual engage with their colleagues to facilitate their own learning, as peers will provide 'scaffolding' that supports the learner at the level that they require (Verenikina 2003).

Breakdown of Assessment Tasks

Figure 1 – Icon key

Aims of this Report

• The Engineers Without Borders (EWB) projects, including the team’s specific project area and project plan that demonstrates mentoring and meeting personal learning and team goals;

• Process evaluation (reflection) skills; and

• Students are reminded of the penalties applying to plagiarism. Copying all or part of an assessment from another student, or from the web, is unacceptable. Plagiarism may result in loss of marks, or other penalties as determined by the Academic Misconduct Policy:

http://policy.usq.edu.au/documents.php?id=14132PL

Additionally:

• teams should keep a complete copy of the final submission and be able to reproduce it within 48 hours if required; and

1. only one (1) Report submission is made by the team;

2. the submission is made by the team’s nominated representative;

7. the file size requirements is strictly adhered to;

8. the file naming requirement is strictly adhered to; and

One of the aims of this course is for you to learn how to apply a problem solving strategy to facilitate your learning. While there are a number of viable problem solving strategies available, in this course you are encouraged to follow the problem solving cycle (PSC) shown in Figure 2.

Appendix A shows a workflow diagram for the tasks in the three Team Reports. While you need to apply the whole PSC to each individual Task, you will note the problem solving cycle has been applied at a meta-level to show how the Reports fit with each other. While this isn’t prescriptive you would do well to follow this basic guide in order to clearly demonstrate your learning. You are encouraged to look on StudyDesk for the podcast on applying a problem solving strategy, and to also do your own further research on this learning model.

1. Your Facilitator will start a forum thread reminding you to complete your PASA for that Report. You should use the spreadsheet template your Facilitator provides, only changing the file name to include your surname and team number. You then upload your completed spreadsheet (don’t change the file type) to the Report submission area on StudyDesk. That means, for each Report, all members will submit a PASA and one will also submit the Team Report itself.

2. The Facilitator will average the scores into a percentage for each member and will collate any qualitative feedback. This compiled summary will be posted back to the forum thread after the Report has been submitted.

• The quality of contributions of ideas and information;

• If contributions are being made in a timely way (according to the needs of the team as a whole);

Your team should include a section in your Code of Conduct to explain any specific interpretations of the Peer Assessment Strategy, including what penalties you are applying for breaches of the Code and how you reward extra effort.

In your team you may have members with very different levels of motivation, and hence participation. Your team’s Code of Conduct should help you to deal with these issues.

Having completed Part B.1 of Report 1, your team will have selected a specific design project from within your design area (refer Figure 3). It is now time to start looking at the proposed solutions.

Figure 3 – EWB project hierarchy

Demonstrate Your Learning

• The evaluation strategy (including criteria, relative importance/weightings, scoring/rankings, etc.) that your team will use to evaluate potential solutions against the design objectives, in order to justify why the final chosen solution is appropriate and successful.

You should clearly explain and justify how the design objectives were developed from and necessitated by the problem context (causes, contextual factors and design constraints) and then how the chosen evaluation criteria were developed from the problem context and the design objectives. Include evidence in your report (from discussion forums, team meetings, etc.) of how the team members developed these design objectives and evaluation criteria collaboratively (you may use appendices to include excerpts of discussions), and how the problem solving cycle was applied.

Note: Team Report 2 contains just the blue section. Team Report 3 contains both the blue and the orange sections. Section 5 is only included here to complete the example.

Your Learning

It is important to be able to reflect and evaluate on the processes the team is using to facilitate effective teamwork, in order to make any necessary changes in a timely manner. Your team’s Code of Conduct (CoC) and Project Management strategies should be dynamic rather than static, and need to be revisited regularly to determine their effectiveness.

• Would changes to your CoC make the above aspects more effective?

• Do your strategies for working as a team and for working on the Team Reports allow you to make the best use of the Problem Solving Strategy? Are you able to give each stage of the PSC due consideration? Are you leaving enough time for an evaluation/feedback stage for each Report to ensure adequate critiquing by most team members?

As a team, you should discuss and evaluate the effectiveness of the team’s strategies. Based on these discussions:

1. Identify the times that the strategies have been specifically utilised or when they should have been. Discuss their relevance in terms of how they have been utilised so far, referring to research literature to support your observations.

While this Part may be summarised and written up by one person, it is important that the team discussions it is based on include input from as many team members as possible, and that this is clearly demonstrated.

End of Part B & Report Tasks

Verenikina, I 2003, Understanding scaffolding and the ZPD in Educational Research, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia, viewed 26 February 2011, <http://www.aare.edu.au/03pap/ver03682.pdf>.

Vygotsky's Sociocultural theory n.d., United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, viewed 25 February 2011, <http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=26925&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html>.

Notes

1. You must include a self assessment of your own contributions.

2. If a student will be absent due to something beyond their control, i.e. illness, work commitments, etc. and they let the group know and make arrangements agreeable to the group they should NOT be penalised. However, if an absence is repeated and no effort is made to contact the group or alternative arrangements for work then this is NOT teamwork and should be scored accordingly. A log of attendance should be maintained by the group leader and members. This is evidence to support this score. In the event of an appeal over an individual’s score these logs will be required.

5 – Excellent, going beyond team expectations and contributing to teamwork at an extremely high standard

4 – Better than average, contributing to teamwork at a high standard

Appendix C – Further Information on Report Structure

Companies will have different requirements and structures for their reports, however a majority will contain the key sections outlined in Table 2. For further information refer to Blique and Moretto’s (2003, p.191) Technically - Write!

Complete each of the following sections. If you are unsure of what each section should contain, or you identify there are gaps in the team’s knowledge, make sure you do some research before writing the section.

Objectives and Evaluation Strategy section

The objectives (or design specification) must clearly outline what your team will achieve and any technical specifications required for your project. Both mandatory and desirable objectives should be listed. They should be informed only by information included in the Introduction, which provides their justification. You should state them in fairly general language, e.g. “To provide enough drinking water for the entire village.”

The team should propose a number of viable solutions, aimed at addressing the problems identified in the Introduction section. Diagrams and well-researched information should be included. It is easiest to describe each solution using the terms and criteria identified in the previous section, in order to make the evaluation consistent (extra but relevant information can be included as an appendix).

When describing the potential solutions bullet points can be used, as long as you are meeting the marking criteria and you are including enough depth. Time management can be an issue with this section of the Report so make sure you spend the right amount of time on brainstorming and describing your solutions (not too much but enough to show they are viable and assessable).

Action [note – this section no longer required for this course ENG1101]

In industry, once a prototype is developed testing or evaluation to ensure that it is successful must be completed. A small scale design helps to assess the viability of a larger scale operation. In order to assess the success, or otherwise, of your project design there needs to be tests designed to ensure the sustainability of the project. It needs to be demonstrated that these testing procedures or evaluation of proposed designs will legitimately supply information that test the veracity of any design proposed.