Lessons from the Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education: Improving Assessment and Performance

Published in: Innovation and Development for the Americas: Engineering, Education, Research and Development: Proceedings of the 8th Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology
Date of Conference: June 1-4, 2010
Location of Conference: Arequipa, Peru
Authors: María M. Larrondo Petrie
Bhushan H. Trivedi
Refereed Paper: #143

Abstract

The lead author of this paper was one of almost 600 Indian faculty who participated in the first Faculty Leadership Institute in 2008 in Mysore, India that was organized by the Indo US Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) and continues to be offered in the summers in Mysore. Participants commit to incorporate and adapt best practices in their courses, provide training seminars to other faculty in Regional Training Centers, report on their experiences, and are encouraged to conduct research with US mentors and publish results. This paper is the third of a series reporting impact from one individual’s participation in the IUCEE program, published by the participant from India in collaboration with the US mentor for the State of Gujarat. This paper considers how to improve assessment and student performance. The Indian educational system has two different levels of examinations: one internal, constructed by the faculty member teaching the course; and the other at an external level, done by the government without input from the teacher. The paper describes why some questions sound more difficult to students and how a teacher can be better prepared to make students performance better on them. The IUCEE has trained more than 1000 faculty in two years, and set up 100 regional centers. The faculty that are trained in the Summer Leadership Institute commit to train other faculty in the regional centers to provide a scalable solution to building faculty capability. The model is being considered and adapted by Brazil.