THE ATTRIBUTE ASSESSMENT PROCESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA

Abstract

This paper describes a recent effort at the University of Manitoba to identify how CEAB graduate attributes are manifested and measured in the engineering curriculum. For this study, four attributes were chosen: Investigation and Design, part of the engineering hard skills, and Professionalism and Lifelong learning as representative of the professional skills of engineering. One third year course each from the Departments of Biosystems, Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical and Computer Engineering were selected to examine the four target attributes during the 2011 Fall term. The respective instructors were involved in completing a self-administered checklist with the intent to survey instructors’ understanding of how the four CEAB attributes were manifest in their courses, and mapping the targeted attributes to the identified courses. Results show that there is much more research needed in this area, with continued emphasis on the manifestation of the twelve CEAB attributes in individual courses, as well as research on student proficiency, and methods of communicating assessment. Although this study did not set out to compare the attributes to one another, there was some evidence that of the four attributes being measured across the four courses, hard skills were more prominently assessed than professional skills.