SBIR Phase I: SEAMLESS - Systematic Electronic Assessment Management Leading to Effective Significant Solutions

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a tool to help engineering faculty design and administer assessments of engineering education. The tool will also assist in the management of assessment data to support instructional decisions for individual students, decisions on courses and programs, and accreditation decisions through the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). The assembled team for this project includes experts in assessment and software commercialization who will conduct the research necessary to determine the technical and commercial feasibility of the technology. The combination of expertise in making assessment-based decisions with experienced computer programming talent produces a team that has the experience and resources necessary to develop an expert system. The broader impacts of this project include the following: 1) by making assessment more manageable, better assessment efforts will be undertaken; 2) with better assessment of student learning, the quality of the learning experiences should improve; 3) as the quality of learning experiences improves in engineering education, so too should the abilities of engineering graduates; and 4) as other disciplines witness the successes associated with this innovative educational tool, it can serve as a model for similar efforts in other disciplines. This tool will facilitate better program planning by assisting with the management of critical data, making evident to programs the types of data that might be helpful and retrieving data for internal and external use.