A Streamlined Approach to Developing and Assessing Program Educational Objectives and Program Outcomes

Christa Weisbrook, William Schonberg
2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings   unpublished
is a Faculty Fellow in the University of Missouri System Office of Academic Affairs, where she is involved in program review and assessment, course redesign, and collaborative programs initiatives. Prior to this appointment, she served as the special assistant to the provost and lecturer in engineering management at Missouri University of Science and Technology and the assistant dean for academic programs for the College of Engineering at the University of Missouri. Dr. Weisbrook earned BS and
more » ... hD degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University of Missouri and an MS in mechanical engineering from the University of WisconsinMadison. She has coordinated ABET efforts at the department, college and campus levels for over a decade and serves as a program evaluator for ABET. Address: Academic Affairs, University of Missouri System, Columbia, MO 65211. 25 years teaching and research experience in the areas of shock physics, spacecraft protection, hypervelocity impact, and penetration mechanics. He received his BSCE from Princeton University in 1981, and his MS and PhD degrees from Northwestern University in 1983 and 1986, respectively. The results of his research have been applied to a wide variety of engineering problems, including the development of orbital debris protection systems for spacecraft in low earth orbit, kinetic energy weapons, the collapse of buildings under explosive loads, insensitive munitions, and aging aircraft. Since 1986, Dr. Schonberg has published over 65 papers in refereed journals on these topics, and has presented nearly 65 papers at a broad spectrum of international scientific and professional meetings, including several invited papers. To date Dr. Schonberg has received over 35 contract and grants from a variety of federal, state, local, and private funding agencies, including the U.S. DoT, NASA, the Air Force Abstract Developing and assessing program educational objectives and program outcomes for the purpose of continuous program improvement and to satisfy the criteria for accreditation by ABET can be a daunting task for departments, given the wide range of acceptable options and the evolving expectations of ABET. However, as programs enter their second cycle of accreditation under EC2000, there is greater understanding of, and hopefully better appreciation for, outcomes-based assessment. Presented in this paper are methods of developing and assessing program educational objectives and program outcomes that the authors found to be straightforward, coherent, efficient and effective as they used them within their own departments and provided guidance for faculty in the other engineering and computer science departments at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Case studies are presented as well as lessons learned from recent objectives and outcomes assessment exercises and accreditation visits.
doi:10.18260/1-2--17386 fatcat:3wznsg2rwrdybpobbtbsaj5gey