A comprehensive ABET-focused assessment plan designed to involve all program faculty

Abstract

In this paper, we present a comprehensive and innovative assessment plan and continuous improvement process used by one of the newest engineering programs in the United States. The program was developed from the ground up to have a strong culture of assessment in preparation for ABET. In developing the assessment plan and continuous improvement process, one design requirement was that the assessment plan involve all faculty in the program in order to establish a strong assessment culture. The assessment plan includes both direct and indirect assessment measures, as well as quantitative and qualitative evaluations of student outcome attainments. The assessment plan targets not only program-level continuous improvement, but also course-level continuous improvement. Course-level continuous improvement involves Course Evaluations and Course Assessment and Continuous Improvement (CACI) Reports, which are prepared by the faculty and serve to document direct assessments of course outcomes and student outcomes. Program-level continuous improvement involves evaluation of the collection of CACI Reports that feed into the Student Outcome Summary Reports (SOSR), which are annually prepared by the Assessment Committee members. Methods developed as part of our assessment plan are generalizable and included in the paper.