Kerrie A. Douglas

Background Sketching exists in many disciplines and varies in how it is assessed, making it challenging to define fundamental sketching skills and the characteristics of a high‐quality sketch. For instructors to apply effective strategies for teaching and assessing engineering sketching, a clear summary of the constructs, metrics, and objectives for sketching assessment across engineering education and related disciplines is needed. Purpose This systematic literature review explores sketching assessment definitions and approaches across engineering education research. Methodology/Approach We collected 671 papers from five major engineering and education databases at all skill levels for reported sketching constructs and metrics, cognition, and learning contexts. Based on the selection criteria, we eliminated all but 41 papers, on which we performed content analysis. Findings/Conclusions Engineering, design, and art emerged as three major disciplines in the papers reviewed. We found that sketching assessment most often employs metrics on accuracy, perspective, line quality, annotations, and aesthetics. Most collected studies examined beginners in undergraduate engineering design sketching or drawing ability tests. Cognitive skills included perceiving the sketch subject, creatively sketching ideas, using metacognition to monitor the sketching process, and using sketching for communication. Implications Sketching assessment varies by engineering discipline and relies on many types of feedback and scoring metrics. Cognitive theory can inform instructional activities as a foundation for sketching skills. There is a need for robust evidence of high‐quality assessment practices in sketching instruction. Assessment experts can apply their knowledge toward improving sketching assessment development, implementation, and validation.

Background There are long‐held concerns about how graduate research programs prepare engineering PhD students for professional practice. Suitable instruments are lacking to effectively assess how research experiences contribute to the success of graduate students becoming professionals. Purpose The purpose of this work is to examine evidence of internal reliability and validity of using the research experiences instrument (REI) scores as a measure of engineering PhD students' professional practice opportunities in their research experiences. Method REI was constructed using an ontological framework. REI was administered twice to engineering PhD students, once to a single university ( n = 236) and once to multiuniversities ( n = 215). Psychometric analyses were conducted related to validity and reliability evidence, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and group score comparisons between genders, race/ethnicity, and engineering disciplines. Results Results of both factor analyses aligned with the theoretical five‐factor structure, with a second‐order Opportunity factor. Mean scores were the same between women and men, and for three engineering disciplines, but significantly lower for racially/ethnically minoritized groups. Factor scores indicate that students often lack opportunities to engage with professionals, a likely cause of students' professional practice struggles. Conclusions Evidence of validity has been provided to justify the use of REI to assess the unique research experiences of engineering PhD students as these relate to preparedness for professional practice. REI scores can be used for gender and race/ethnicity comparisons and are generalizable across engineering disciplines. Where students' REI scores show a lack of opportunities, remedial strategies can be implemented.