Rethinking e-assessment in a core engineering course

Since 2005 assessment in many core engineering courses at Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland, is performed in the electronic manner. Every year the method is modified, based on teachers' experience and students' feedback [1]. Recently, the approach to e-assessment has been thoroughly revised, based on Bloom's taxonomy of students outcomes and Kolb's learning cycle [2,3]. In particular, the authors focused on the proper balance and order of the questions, corresponding to the lower level (knowledge, understanding) and the medium level (application, analysis) of Bloom's taxonomy. A new category of assessment, called “formative towards summative” (FTS) has been designed and introduced in the 2011/2012 autumn semester.