Autonomous Assessment of a Laboratory Exam for the Digital Hardware Curriculum

Engineering accreditation bodies, and professionals alike agree that practical (psychomotor) skills are a key component of a holistic engineering education, alongside cognitive and affective development. Despite this, practical skills and the psychomotor domain are largely underexamined in tertiary engineering education, in favor of theoretical tasks. Laboratory exams, as they exist today, lack the scalability of written exams and standalone single-student exam boards require technical supervision beyond the understanding of an exam invigilator. Such logistical and technical bottlenecks could be overcome through a portable electronic device that contained autonomous assessment capability. This paper explores the prototyping of a self-contained assessment module, capable of accurately assessing a student's psychomotor capability within a university Digital Hardware course. The prototype is verified as an examination tool through rigorous testing and student surveys.