Accredited Engineering Programs Research Articles

INCORPORATING TIMBER EDUCATION INTO EXISTING ACCREDITED ENGINEERING PROGRAMS

The demand for large and tall timber buildings is increasing across Canada. The recently constructed Brock Commons building in Vancouver and the upcoming Arbour building in Toronto are two such examples. These buildings are challenging for practitioners to design, and presently only a limited number of engineering institutions across Canada offer a course in timber design. There is a growing demand for engineering graduates who can contribute to the creation of these structures; however, the number of graduates who meet this criterion is lagging. Separate courses in timber could be introduced to more universities, however the addition of a new course may overload students, whose course schedules are already tightly regulated by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board. Moreover, the creation of a new course can take several years and will therefore not meet the current industry demand quick enough.
 The research herein presents a method of incorporating timber education within the existing civil engineering curriculum in Canada, without the introduction of an additional course. The purpose of the proposed method is to offer an efficient solution that will provide engineering students with knowledge of the timber industry quickly to meet industry demand. Two timber learning modules were integrated within the existing Structural Steel Design course at an accredited university. The timber learning modules paralleled the topics covered within an undergraduate timber design course. Students were surveyed before and after the learning modules were presented to assess level of interest and motivations, knowledge of the industry, and level of understanding. After the learning modules were presented, 76% of students indicated they had some level of confidence in contributing to the design of a timber building. These results show that the timber learning modules were successful at introducing and generating an interest in timber design, and that students gained basic knowledge they could apply in practice.

Difference between Engineering Program Accreditations at Baccalaureate and Master’s Level: Case Study Based on ABET

As the education level of engineering and scientific talentscontinuouslyrise worldwide, the demand for master engineering program accreditation has gradually increased. International engineering programaccreditation organizationsmostly focus on baccalaureate level, less on the master's level and above. In order to construct accreditation system of engineering program at master's level, this study selected ABET, one of the pioneers inaccreditation at the master’s level, as a case study that emphasizes on revealing differences of engineering program accreditations in master's and baccalaureate level. The study found that, compared to the baccalaureate level,the general criteria of master’s level is emphatically featured in curriculum accreditation master’s level general criteria feature curriculum accreditation criteria that lay more emphasison previous course accumulation, professionalism and practicality, assessment review, higher level faculty, and along with facilities focusing more on student-centered concept and requirement for information society.

Study on Teaching Methods for Engineering Project Management Based on Professional Accreditation of Engineering Programs

This article is focused on the teaching methodology for Engineering Project Management course. The course is an elementary and core course for automotive engineering major based on the requirement of professional accreditation of engineering programs. The course can be described as a course with big scale and more emphasized on industry. Three teaching methodologies have been used to coordinating with the course features: case-study learning, mission-driven learning, project-driven learning and flipped-classroom learning. The article addressed how the three methods have been applied in teaching. Meanwhile, the article also mentioned that a multi-methods evaluation should be more precise for evaluating students’ abilities.

Assessment of outcome-based integrated design project

Outcome-Based Education (OBE) implementation is one of the qualifying requirements for engineering programme accreditation in Malaysia. Implementation of the OBE in Integrated Design Project (IDP) is essential in producing high quality engineering graduates that are able to meet the challenges especially in the era of Industry 4.0 in Malaysia. IDP is the course offered to the final year students of undergraduate programme in Faculty of Civil Engineering, University Teknologi MARA. This paper presents the mapping of the addressing Course Outcomes (CO) and Programme Outcomes (PO) to the scopes of assessment in a capstone project (CP) for IDP. The explicitness in the measurement of CO and PO in the course is demonstrated. The rubrics for the assessment of CP are also presented. Finally, evaluation of student performance in IDP particularly CP is discussed through a sample analysis of the CO and PO attainments.

Using Data Mining Techniques to Guide Academic Programs Design and Assessment

This paper presents a novel application of data mining techniques to guide academic programs design and assessment. More specifically, it propose using association rule mining techniques to discover a set of rules that govern the relationship between two core components of an academic program, program educational objectives (PEOs) and students outcomes(SOs). As a case study, this paper demonstrates how association rule mining techniques are applied to mine mapping rules between the PEOs and a predefined set of SOs adopted by the American Board for Engineering and Technology-Engineering Accreditation Commission (ABET-EAC) for engineering programs. To this end, a set of 152 ABET-EAC accredited engineering programs’ self-study reports have been collected and the mapping data between their PEOs and ABET-EAC SOs have been extracted. This dataset has been pre-processed and transformed into a representation suitable for applying association rule mining techniques. This involves identifying a set of PEOs labels, annotating data instances with PEOs labels, and projecting each multi-label data instance into a set of single-label instances. Apriopi algorithm is then applied to discover the rules that govern the mapping between PEOs and ABET-EAC SOs. The discovered rules are of particular importance for guiding the design and assessment of engineering academic programs. Besides that, the discovered rules unveil of a number of interesting correlations between PEOs and ABET-EAC SOs that need further investigation by pedagogists.

A snapshot of engineering education in Canada

Although all accredited engineering programs in Canada are assessed by the same governing body, each institution has its own set of expectations regarding its distribution of effort, the types of research conducted by its faculty, and the way it delivers its curriculum. Individual departments and programs each have their own strengths and challenges, but collectively they share the responsibility of educating tomorrow’s engineers.This paper presents a summary of the results of a descriptive study examining three aspects of engineering education in Canada: the balance and types of research, teaching, and service that engineering educators are doing, the level to which engineering educators are engaging with engineering education research, and the look and feel of the learning environment that undergraduate engineering students experience in accredited engineering programs in Canada.

A Three-Level Software Support Platform for the Graduate Attribute-Curriculum Improvement Process

Since 2014, the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) has required that accredited engineering programs implement a process of Graduate Attribute Assessment and Continual Improvement (GA/CI). At the University of Ottawa, the GA/CI process has beendesigned around three levels of administration (Faculty,Program and Course) that also utilizes Vena Solution’scloud database system structured around Excel. This paperdescribes the Faculty’s three-tiered administrative structure and discusses the implementation of the Vena system at each of these levels.

Project-based experience through real manufacturing activities in mechanical engineering

As reported by many professional bodies responsible for accrediting engineering programs, today’s engineering graduates present important limitations in the practice of engineering because current engineering curricula are still too focused on fundamental engineering science without providing sufficient integration to industrial practice. To overcome these limitations, active learning approaches have been applied in the literature with positive results in engagement, motivation and student’s performance. In this paper, we propose a project-based learning approach with real manufacturing activities in a four-year mechanical engineering course to improve the learning process. The goal of the project is to plan the manufacturing process of a real part and conduct at shop-floor levels all the activities required. The experience was evaluated considering project/exam grades, questionnaires and manufacturing quality. The results showed an increase in student’s satisfaction, improvement in the exam performance and a clear increase in student’s enrolment in the manufacturing master degree.

Standards and You [Catching Rays

There are literally dozens of standards associations worldwide (almost every nation has some type of regulating unit for standards). Some relate only to national equipment requirements, while several are recognized on a global basis, where their standards must be adhered to for product acceptance. Unfortunately, most engineering students will get, at best, limited exposure to standards during their academic experience. If discussed at all, the topic will most often be covered as part of the capstone project during their senior year of college. One of the requirements for ABET accreditation of engineering programs is that engineering standards be covered in some manner, but the depth of the coverage is not prescribed. Regardless of the particular field of engineering the student pursues, there will be standards that apply. Whether a person is designing a new television or planning an installation of an air-conditioning system, he or she must adhere to standards.

Practice and Exploration on Bachelor Program Accreditation for Hydraulic Engineering in China During Past Ten Years

The development process of engineering program accreditation in China is briefly introduced, then it put more attention to describe the accreditation exploration and practice experiences for hydraulic engineering program in past 10 years, such as the construction of accreditation standard system, how to do the survey at site and selection and training for experts, student outcomes evaluation and the problems to be solved.

CENTRALIZED OUTCOME-BASED ASSESSMENT PROCESS AT MCGILL UNIVERSITY

Abstract - Compliance with the Graduate Attributes and Continual Improvement criteria is an essential component of the accreditation of engineering programs in Canada. In response to this requirement, McGill University’s Faculty of Engineering established a centralized process in which 1) a uniform organizational structure was established, 2) a set of common graduate attribute indicators was developed, 3) the current Learning Management System (D2L) was integrated into the assessment of the graduate attributes, 4) universal indirect assessments for all programs were designed, 5) consistent data analysis and interpretation processes were implemented, and 6) standardized guidelines for continual improvement were created. The implementation of this process, its strengths, and recommendations to increase its efficiency and sustainability are discussed in this paper.

USING POST COURSE ASSESSMENTS TO INVOLVE INSTRUCTORS IN THE CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT PROCESS

Abstract – Continuous improvement is a critical aspect of engineering program development and accreditation. Instructors are important stakeholders who can provide valuable feedback with regards to courses and curriculum; however, obtaining this information can be problematic. Here we present a post course assessment system (PCAS) that enables all instructors to provide timely and specific feedback about their courses as well as pause to reflect on the pedagogical successes and challenges they have faced over the course of a semester. The PCAS also serves a number of program specific uses (triggers, graduate attributes, consistency). The system has been very successful if providing course-based information and, taken in aggregate, program-based insight. The system continues to be adapted but is a good model of instructor engagement and feedback mechanism.

The comparison between series and parallel: Integrated experimental teaching model for pharmaceutical engineering students based on criteria for accrediting engineering programs in China

The thought of criteria for accrediting engineering programs was introduced into major experiments for pharmaceutical engineering in Wuhan Institute of Technology. Aiming at the disadvantages of experimental teaching in pharmaceutical engineering in China, the integrated experimental teaching mode was introduced. Through the comprehensive study of a drug, original drug synthesis, pharmaceutical analysis, pharmaceutical preparation, and pharmacology experiment courses are linked together. Systematicness and integrity of the experiment were enhanced through re-integrating the corresponding experimental content and projects; the composite knowledge structure with the longitudinal and transverse connection of theoretical knowledge obtained through experiment was formed. With the evaluation criteria of pharmaceutical engineering experiment based on Chinese “Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs”, by comparing series and parallel teaching modes in a three - year period (2013–2015), the effects of experimental teaching in series and parallel on relevant knowledge structure of 324 undergraduate students (a total of 324 undergraduate students, 99 in 2013, 122 in 2014, 103 in 2015) of pharmaceutical engineering were studied. Not only to let them experience series, but also to let them experience parallel. The correlation data were compared using t-test to compare the differences between groups, final assessment data for students were subjected to a comparative statistical analysis. The results showed: in comparisons of students with higher scores in experimental report, experimental operation, and mastery of relevant knowledge, the proportions of the students in series teaching were respectively 40.50%, 11.40%, and 25.03% higher than those in parallel teaching; the proportion of students satisfied with series teaching was 23.03% higher than the proportion of students satisfied with parallel teaching. Through a comparative survey of students’ approval of series and parallel teaching, it’s discovered that series teaching could arouse the students’ interest in the experiment course more than parallel teaching could, make them clearly recognize the real significance of the experimental project training, and eliminate the adverse effects of traditional parallel teaching on the students to a certain extent. In the series integrated experimental teaching, students’ learning initiative and creativity were fully demonstrated. With the comprehensive evaluation system issued by Wuhan institute of technology, the influence of series teaching method on the students’ academic abilities was studied through the comparative analysis on the scores of the students’ graduation theses before (2011–2013) and after (2014–2016) the series teaching reform. The results showed: the series teaching method could significantly improve the quality of graduation thesis in the subject implementation, innovation ability, and subject progress. The work can be used for reference by other major engineering courses, thus integrating related courses into a whole, and promote the sustainable development of Engineering Education in China.

Offshore Engineering Education: Assuring Quality Through Dual Accreditation

Abstract In an increasingly globalized environment, engineering graduates must be able to work in diverse teams which may span nations. This means that engineering qualifications must embrace transnational perspectives and different local contexts within which engineering is practiced. One way to assure quality at the transnational level is to develop “dual accreditation”: degrees offered offshore are accredited by both the offering education provider's accrediting body and the professional body of the country in which the offering is being delivered. In light of this change to the engineering industry, The International Engineering Alliance has modified the Washington Accord, which controls the accreditation of all engineering degrees offered within signatory nations. Pre-2014 any engineering program delivered offshore needed accreditation from the offering education provider's professional body, however, by 2014, the Washington accord was altered to require dual accreditation: in other words, accreditation must be a collaborative endeavor between the accrediting body from the country offering the program and the local accrediting body of the nation where the program is being offered. This change in the agreement has some significant implications for the future accreditation of offshore engineering programs and this paper will examine some of these emerging issues.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ VIEWS ON ENGINEERS CANADA’S DEFINITION OF PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING WORK

The breadth of the engineering profession is illustrated by Engineers Canada’s (EC) recognition of over 120 accredited engineering programs across the country. Arguably, the work of a professional engineer spans over an even larger scope. However, synthesizing a description of engineering work that encompasses all aspects of the profession is extremely difficult. Applicants to engineering programs in Canadian universities require high standing in specific course pre-requisites. In order to make an informed decision with regard to engineering as a possible career path, it is critical that students clearly understand the engineering profession. The purpose of this paper is to describe how Grade 9/10 students’ perceptions of engineering work compares to EC’s description, based on the outcomes of a research study involving a questionnaire and interviews. The findings show that the emerging categories from these students’ descriptions of engineering work that aligns with EC’s description, involves design (42.3%) and helping people or the environment (16.5%).

Industrial training approach using GPM P5 Standard for Sustainability in Project Management: a framework for sustainability competencies in the 21st century

Malaysian Engineering Accreditation (Engineering Programme Accreditation Manual, 2007) requires all bachelor degree in engineering programmes to incorporate a minimum of two months industrial training in order for the programme to be accredited by the council. The industrial training has the objective to provide students on the insights of being an engineer at the workplace hence increasing their knowledge in employability skills prior to graduation. However the current structure of industrial training is not able to inculcate good leadership ability and prepare students with sustainability competencies needed in the era of Sustainable Development (SD). This paper aims to study project management methodology as a framework to create a training pathway in industrial training for students in engineering programs using Green Project Management (GPM) P5 standard for sustainability in project management. The framework involves students as interns, supervisors from both university and industry and also participation from NonProfit Organisation (NPO). The framework focus on the development of the student's competency in employability skills, lean leadership and sustainability competencies using experiential learning approach. Deliverables of the framework include internship report, professional sustainability report using GPM P5 standard and competency assessment. The post-industrial phase of the framework is constructed for students to be assessed collaboratively by the university, industry and the sustainability practitioner in the country. The ability for the interns to act as a change agent in sustainability practices is measured by the competency assessment and the quality of the sustainability report. The framework support the call for developing holistic students based on Malaysian Education Blueprint (Higher Education) 2015-2025 and address the gap between the statuses of engineering qualification to the sustainability competencies in the 21st century in particular by achieving the Sustainability Graduates (SG) attributes outlined in the framework.

Accreditation of Spanish engineering programs, first experiences. The case of the Terrassa School of Engineering

<p class="Textoindependiente21">The implementation of the European Space for Higher Education has entailed new requirements for Spanish Higher Education Programs. Regulations (RD 1393, 2007) stablish that university programs, in order to have official validity, must be submitted to an external evaluation process before their official implementation, denominated Validation, and to an ex-post process or Accreditation. Terrassa School of Engineering (EET) was one of the first schools in Spain to adapt to the European Space for Higher Education, in the academic period 2009-10 and then, one of the first university institutions submitted to an accreditation process. In this communication, the important role of the Internal Quality Assurance System in the assessment of the school’s programs is exposed as well as the approach followed in the key steps of the process: Accreditation</p>

RECONCILING GRADUATE ATTRIBUTE ASSESSMENT WITH EXISTING OUTCOME-BASED ASSESSMENT

Historically, accreditation of engineering programs has relied on the use of input-based assessment of a program by framing major categories and identifying accreditation unit totals for each category. Beginning in 2014, compliance with an outcomes-based assessment of program quality and implementation of a program improvement process is also required.The introduction of graduate attributes assessment at BCIT prompted faculty members to question the relationship between existing learning outcomes and indicators of graduate attributes. Since both outcomes and indicators are written to describe competencies, faculty hypothesized that correlation exists between them.Upon further investigation, faculty, staff, and administrators at BCIT came to understand that there is a relationship between learning outcomes and indicators of graduate attributes, but they are not synonymous. Indicators are required to build a normalizing bridge between outcomes and attributes. They provide a rational relationship between a curriculum’s individual course learning outcomes and the twelve graduate attributes mandated by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board.. This is especially important for subjective expectations of learning where there is not an obvious one-to-one relationship between learning outcomes and attributes

EVALUATION OF INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS IN ENGINEERING DESIGN TEAMS

The curriculum of accredited engineering programs in Canada must culminate with a significant design experience where students must demonstrate an ability to work in teams. The determination of individual grades for work products submitted by a team is however a challenging task. To deter students from free riding on the efforts of their teammates, every team member should not simply receive the same grade. Individual grades in the senior process design course at the University of New Brunswick are determined by first assigning a team grade to team deliverables and then adjusting each team member’s grade up or down using a multiplier. The value of the multiplier is based on peer and mentor evaluations and on the level of participation of the student in course activities. The peer ratings collected in 2014-2015 are generally higher than the mentor ratings, likely because of peer pressures to give high ratings. The bias is greatly reduced however when the evaluations are normalized by dividing the rating for each student by the team average. Because of this bias, the mentor evaluations should complement the peer ratings when providing formative feedback to students and determining individual team member grades.

Does an Accredited Engineering Program Contribute for Training the Creative Talented Engineers? : Based on Students’ Experiences and Learning Performances

Does an Accredited Engineering Program Contribute for Training the Creative Talented Engineers? : Based on Students’ Experiences and Learning Performances