Building a repository of instructional and assessment techniques for instructional module development system

Instructional Module Development System (IMODS) project aims to assist educators in developing a STEM-based curriculum, even if the educator has not had extensive or formal training in education. The Instructional Module Development System is open-source web-based course design software that presents a framework for representing curriculum, particularly in the areas of STEM, and scaffold users through the process of curriculum development. Research shows that choice of appropriate curriculum and assessment methods are critical in successfully teaching students and having the students retain the information taught (Boice, 2000). IMODS strives to be a tool to assist educators in building a curriculum that follows an outcome-based education process and includes clear learning objectives along with an instructional and assessment plan. To successfully achieve this goal, a variety of educational, instructional, and assessment strategies are required to be integrated into the program. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a repository of current best pedagogical and assessment practices that are included as part of IMODS. We present our methodology for identification and collection of various instructional and assessment techniques from various top engineering education journals and conferences. We also present the integration of this repository into the IMODS software to present various options to the user when defining the learning objectives of a course. We present the results of the evaluation of the repository constructed and the search feature for instructional and assessment techniques within the IMODS system.