Examination design and course quality evaluation of “project-based learning” process based on front-door adjustment
QIAN Chen1, KUANG Yi1, ZHANG Jing2,3
1.College of Automation and Electronic Information, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, Hu'nan 411105; 2. College of Electrical and Information Engineering, Hu'nan University, Changsha 410006; 3. Accreditation Guidance Center, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, Hu'nan 411105
Abstract:Engineering education is an important part of higher education in China, and engineering education professional certification is an internationally accepted engineering education quality assurance system, and it is also an important basis for achieving international mutual recognition of engineering education and engineer qualification. “Project-based learning” is a new course teaching method to meet the requirements of engineering education professional certification to examine students' ability. Because of the influence of students' “inertia” and other hybrid factors, the examination results in the conventional course quality evaluation can not truly reflect the ability improvement that students can obtain in learning. This paper introduces the “front-door adjustment” of causal inference science. When facing the confounding factors that are difficult to control and observe, on the one hand, it guides and optimizes the teaching and examination design of project-based learning to improve the adverse effects of confounding factors on learning and results. On the other hand, it is used to evaluate the real causal effect of project-based teaching method on students' learning results.