An Integrated Approach To Evaluation Of Program Educational Objectives And Assessment Of Program Outcomes

For many engineering education programs, the process for evaluating program educational objectives is interpretive; that is, achievement of program educational objectives is inferred from achievement of program outcomes. What is lacking in current practice is a systematic way to examine the success of a program based on a set of interlinked program objectives evaluation and outcomes assessment processes. The new processes should accommodate differentiation between the data collection efforts associated with outcomes assessment and objectives evaluation. Such a separation is particularly important since ABET has recently adopted a change in engineering accreditation criteria that partitions outcomes assessment and objective evaluation data at the day of graduation. The procedures described in this paper accommodate the changes in criteria while providing a systematic approach that eliminates redundancy in data collection, targets relevant constituents for input, and reduces strain on limited resources. Application of the procedures in an industrial engineering program is discussed.