After Master’s Thesis As A Tool For Program Evaluation

This paper presents initial experiences and results from the content analyses of reflection documents made by students after finishing their Master’s theses. The reflection document is a compulsory part of the examination of the Master’s thesis since spring semester 2011.The main objectives of the reflection document has been to give feedback to examiners and program boards about how the learning outcomes of the program are fulfilled and how the student’s individual skills have developed during the thesis work.

At the Institute of Technology at Linköping University all engineering programs use the CDIO-syllabus, slightly modified, to express goals and learning outcomes. Since there is an upcoming national evaluation of engineering education in Sweden this study is an initiative to test if the reflection documents can be used as a complement in the evaluation process to provide evidence of fulfillment of the national program learning outcomes.

This pilot study includes a subset of all the submitted reflection documents. The result from this study indicates that the method used can provide evidence of the students’ perceptions of the program and fulfillment of the goals. The findings show that the students find most of the learning outcomes fulfilled although some areas must be clarified and improved.