Towards Improving Computational Competencies for Undergraduate Engineering Students

In the global economy of the 21 century, the preparation of a competitive U.S. workforce with knowledge and understanding of critical computing concepts, methodologies, and techniques is essential. The Collaborative Process to Align Computing Education with Engineering Workforce Needs (CPACE) team developed a partnership among various stakeholders – Michigan State University (MSU) and Lansing Community College (LCC) and business and industry leaders – to identify the computational skills that are essential for a globally competitive engineering workforce. Our goal is to redesign the role of computing within the engineering programs at MSU and LCC to develop computational competencies –informed by industry needs– by infusing computational learning opportunities into the undergraduate engineering curriculum. The emphasis of this paper is on the curricular implementation phase (CPACE II) focusing on: • Preliminary survey results across target courses at MSU. • Efforts to assess students’ computational competencies using a rubric based on the CPACE computational competencies. • Brief discussion of our efforts to develop and validate assessments to measure computational competencies for engineering students.