A project based assessment of the foundation engineering course for large class sizes

The Engineering Council of South Africa has a mandatory requirement that all the courses of the Baccalaureus Technologiae degree shall comprise a project. The passing of this project is required in order to pass the course. The purpose of such projects is to assess whether a student has understood the knowledge imparted and is able to appropriately apply it. Allocation of a different project to each learner in the case of large class sizes poses a practical problem. Hence, group projects are opted for. Furthermore, the fair evaluation of the group projects and allocation of specific marks to each member based on actual contribution poses a challenge, as it is not acceptable to allocate the same mark to every group member. This paper proposes an original comprehensive system for, firstly, assessing the application of knowledge and secondly, fairly assessing group projects and allocating specific marks to the individual members. This system was implemented in the Foundation Engineering IV course, at the University of Johannesburg. The system was successful as 91 % of the learners achieved the outcomes. In addition, the individually allocated marks appeared fair as none of them were queried.