Implementation of Artificial Intelligence Assessment in Engineering Laboratory Education

In laboratory courses, the assessment of exercises and assignments typically is treated as a simple, quantifiable approach. This approach however rarely includes qualitative factors, especially if the grading is being automatically performed by the system, and provides little to no feedback for the students to reflect on their work. The role of the laboratory in engineering education however is very critical and engineering students must possess knowledge that goes beyond mere theory, therefore a diverse and multidimensional assessment of laboratory students is a necessity. In this paper, an educational tool for laboratory students implementing automatic assessment based on artificial intelligence is being proposed, based on a pilot version that has been developed for MATLAB-related coursework. The highlights of the proposed tool is that it is based on a proven cognitive theory, it is easy to compile and or modify its contents, it is based on the same laboratory environment that the students are being trained in, it can include qualitative evaluation and it can save time that the educators would otherwise require to manually evaluate the exercises. [Partial funding for this research was provided by Greek national resources under the framework of the "Archimedes III: Funding of Research Groups in TEI of Athens" project of the "Education & Lifelong Learning" Operational Programme.] [For the complete proceedings, see ED557189.]