Student outcomes assessment and evaluation for ETAC/ABET

Abstract

ETAC/ABET-accredited programs have demonstrated their excellence during rigorous, objective, periodic reviews conducted by external evaluators. One main part of the accreditation process concerns the student outcomes. It all starts with ETAC/ABET student learning criteria. An Engineering Technology program must use these learning criteria to develop its own student outcomes. It must document student outcomes that will serve as a reference in judging how the students attain the program educational objectives. A documented and effective process for the periodic review and revision of student outcomes must be available. One challenge is how to present the student outcomes in the self-study report. Each student outcome has to be assessed via a well-developed rubric. Another challenge is to how to summarize all statistics from all different rubrics and report it in a well-written presentation. This paper proposes a simple presentation method to document and present the student outcomes in the self-study report. Data from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology programs is used in this paper to illustrate the presentation method. For each course taught, the instructor evaluates each student on a specific Performance Criteria. These Performance Criteria are derived from the course syllabus and are chosen to capture a specific skill or attribute for a particular student outcome. The faculty member must indicate which course evaluation tools were used (e.g. a specific exam problem, lab exercise, etc), how the data was collected, the threshold used, and the expected level of attainment for that particular Performance Criteria. This information is then captured and summarized on a Course-Level Assessment Form. For each ETAC/ABET criteria a-k, one or more student outcomes are developed and mapped to the criteria. In this paper, criteria "C" is considered for exemplification purpose. It is the ability to conduct standard tests and measurements; to conduct, analyze, and interpret experiments; and to apply experimental results to improve processes. A student outcome can be proposed to reflect these criteria. In this paper, a student outcome is proposed to assess criteria "C" in the Electrical/Computer Engineering Technology program. A new rubric to assess this student outcome is presented along with data collected. Ideas for improvement are reported as well, in order to close the loop followed by effective changes of the evaluation process.