Developing an Application to Manage and View ABET Course Material

Electronic storage of student assignments for use during an ABET accreditation visit is becoming more prevalent. This paper introduces a pair of computer applications for managing and viewing student material stored in an electronic catalog. The system was developed to assist ABET Program Evaluators (PEVs) during their review of course materials, as well as, to facilitate the audited institution’s assemblage and maintenance of the submitted materials. All student course materials were scanned or originally submitted in electronic form and named according to a defined naming convention. This naming convention specifies the assignment’s associated course, term, and chronological submission order for cataloging within a database. An ABET catalog creator application was developed to enter each assignment into a master database along with key assignment attributes that can assist the PEVs in searching for particular supporting material. An ABET catalog viewer application was also developed that allows the PEVs to retrieve and view the assignment files. The PEVs are able to search for courses and their associated assignments according to academic program and/or program and ABET outcomes supported. Comments and survey results from the faculty, staff, and PEVs working with these applications are also presented within this paper. Finally, lessons learned and future features of the developed application will be presented.