To download this document as a PDF, please click here.
Background
ABET is the accreditation board for engineering programs, and this board periodically reviews and re-accredits our twelve undergraduate (Bachelor of Science) programs. A degree from an accredited engineering program is valuable to students for many reasons, but among the most important reasons is that it can be difficult to get a Professional Engineering license without a degree from an accredited institution. Accreditation can help when a student applies to graduate school, and it can help enhance a student’s job prospects. Parents look for accreditation when they are advising their high school age students about prospective colleges, too. ABET is a quality assurance organization that is recognized worldwide.
The Program for Engineering Communication plays an important role in the ABET assessment process, and this document is a summary of our responsibilities.
The Role of InterEGR 397 (Engineering Communication) in CoE ABET Assessment
InterEGR 397 assessment data and analysis have been used in every undergraduate engineering program’s self study. Since our Engineering Communication course is a requirement for most of the engineering programs in the College of Engineering, it makes sense that we are involved in the assessment of communication, teamwork, ethics, and other skills that we develop in our required courses.
The evaluators are provided with InterEGR 397 materials that include Alumni Surveys, minutes from our Industrial Advisory Board meetings, and sample assignments, rubrics, and student work from each discipline of engineering.
We periodically provide student outcomes assessment data to our undergraduate programs to show how our students have performed in the following ABET Student Outcomes:
- 3. an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences;
- 4. an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts;
- 5. an ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives; and
- 7. an ability to acquire and apply new knowledge as needed, using appropriate learning strategies.
Our grading rubrics for InterEGR 397 show “Performance Indicators” that help us measure each of these broadly stated ABET Student Outcomes. ABET did not dictate the performance indicators that we use; we developed them ourselves with input from our Industrial Advisory Board and engineering senior design faculty.
Continuous Improvement in Technical Communication
Part of our continuous improvement in Engineering Communication over the past six years has been our effort to develop appropriate performance indicators through engagement with faculty, industrial advisory board members, and alumni; we have also used our rubrics to attempt to align our own expectations for InterEGR 397, combating some of the problems we have had over the years with differences between the different instructors of InterEGR 397. ABET has helped our program work toward better connections with senior design faculty, since many senior design faculty adopted several of our performance indicators for their ABET data collection purposes.
Our next challenge will be to find even more meaningful ways to engage with senior design faculty to ensure a coordinated approach to communication and ethics college-wide.
For further information about ABET, please contact Laura Grossenbacher, Director of PEC and Director of Undergraduate Program Review.