Investigating the impact of in-class assignments on higher order thinking skills of students in engineering course

Assignment is an integral part of the continuous assessment in engineering curriculum. Assignments could be homework problems, in-class quizzes, take-home quizzes, projects, oral presentation, lab exercises, etc. However, writing a home assignment normally is viewed by the students as a routine and insignificant curriculum activity. It is our common observation that very few students are serious about properly completing and submitting take-home assignments and majority indulge in mass copying, making proper grading almost impossible. On the other hand, in-class assignments motivate the students to do in-depth study, discuss and interpret the concepts from the study material. They also facilitate the teacher to interact and remove misconception among the students. In our work, we investigated the impact of class assignment on undergraduate computer engineering students' higher order thinking skills (HOTS). Ninety seven students from two sections of the same computer engineering course participated in this study. The two sections were given both class assignments and take home assignments on chosen topics. Assignments consisted of questions based on HOTS. A knowledge survey was conducted for the students after the assignment submission to know how much confidence they had in solving similar questions in their end semester term work test. The results of independent sample test suggested that there was a significant difference in HOTS of students who took CA compared with students who took HA. Also, the knowledge survey indicated that students who took CA showed higher confidence in solving questions with HOTS and the confidence level increasing as the cognitive level of the questions climb up the Bloom's hierarchy. A qualitative analysis of students' responses to an open-ended question in CA indicated positive and encouraging feedback from students about their perceptions about solving an In-class assignment instead of take-home assignment.