Contrasting three different academic assessments of a compulsory

Abstract

Industrial Projects IV is a compulsory capstone module for students enrolled for the postgraduate Baccalaureus Technologiae (BTech) in Electrical Engineering (Power) in South Africa. Many graduates from the National Diploma course often struggle to pass this module at their first attempt. This may be due to a number of challenges, such as; struggling to integrate theory with practice; perceiving their postgraduate studies to be overwhelming; feeling anxious as a result of uncertainty about what is expected of them; not knowing how they will be assessed; and finally experiencing a lack of support and understanding from their mentors. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the course structure of a compulsory capstone module offered at a university of technology which has helped students to overcome some of these challenges. The paper further contrasts the assessment results of three different academics that were tasked with mentoring these power engineering students and evaluating their various submissions. Results show that the use of a variety of pedagogies enables postgraduate power engineering students to successfully attain academic success, while predefined rubrics are essential in achieving reliability and validity of assessments among different academics.