SUMMARY     Background    Potential Impact and Signifigance    Methodology    References

SUMMARY

We are addressing the crucial problem of how to best assure that our engineering students receive a quality education, one that will enable them to make important contributions as professionals and citizens. We will do this by assessing the outcomes of their education. In particular, we will study how to evaluate engineering education programs, both for accreditation and to assess the increasing number of innovations that have resulted from almost a decade of NSF and private foundation funding. With the introduction of the challenging "EC-2000" accreditation criteria, engineering programs now must develop and implement systems for continuous improvement. Faculty must demonstrate that the outcomes important to the mission of the institution and the objectives of the program are being met via sound measurement, and must give evidence that these results are applied to the further development and improvement of the program. Hence, outcome assessment and continuous curriculum improvement have now come to the forefront of engineering education. 

Thus our focus is on assessment. We are doing this through a highly integrated effort involving a team of experienced engineering education researchers from six universities. Our multi-disciplinary team of Principal Investigators is collectively involved in engineering curricula innovation, assessment, and educational research. 

Our objectives are to:

  • Evaluate a comprehensive set of methodologies for assessing engineering education undergraduate program outcomes, and hence,
  • Provide engineering educators with well documented, alternative methods, including protocols and instruments, for assessing specific outcomes. 
  • In doing this, we will work with colleagues at partner institutions to:
    1. Identify existing instruments for each method to assess student achievement outcomes.
    2. Develop instruments when none can be found.
    3. Compare the effectiveness of multiple methods to assess the same outcomes.
    4. Implement these methods and their instruments to assess innovations at multiple institutions.
    5. Document these methods so that they can be adapted by other institutions.
    6. Utilize the worldwide web to facilitate adoption by other engineering programs.
We are interested in providing engineering educators with cost-effective means for outcome assessment. The successful completion of this project will result in a series of case studies, each devoted to a specific engineering outcome and various ways that it can be assessed. These case studies will help engineering educators who are preparing for or who are actively engaged in outcomes assessment, but who may not have either proper background knowledge or available resources to conduct rigorous evaluations of their programs. We will also develop instruments and other tools that can be used for accreditation purposes and we will extend some of the methodologies through our research efforts. 
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