During the Spring trimester of 2024, in the UCD ‘Robotics Design Project’ (EEEN10020) module with 54 first-year undergraduate engineering students, we deliberately revised the assessment strategy. We evolved a take-home assignment into a pair of supervised in-class exercises.
Benefit of this resource and how to make the best use of it
Even before the emergence of Gen AI tools, there was ample reason to structure engineering coursework assignments in a more timetabled and actively-delivered fashion. Lightly-supported homework assignments with long timelines loom over a student’s trimester, more often a source of distraction and guilt than an opportunity for deep work and quality learning. University teachers play a powerful social role, and have the power to set timetables and impose expectations. Let’s use that for good. It has always a good idea to proactively and deliberately create assessments that get the best out of students. The emergence of powerful Gen AI tools is just another motivator: now at-home assessments can easily be plagiarized in an undetectable way, so it is very timely to reconsider how we support students in their continual assessment.
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Mukherjee, A., Li, J., & Cuffe, P. (2025). Guarding code originality and motivating student engagement: in-class simulated microcontroller assignments in a stage 1 robotics module. National Resource Hub (Ireland). Retrieved from: https://hub.teachingandlearning.ie/resource/guarding-code-originality-and-motivating-student-engagement-in-class-simulated-microcontroller-assignments-in-a-stage-1-robotics-module/ License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA).
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