A Technique For Program Wide Direct Assessment Of Student Performance

This paper builds on previous work related to the direct assessment of student performance. Previous work assessed CE program outcomes using a single senior-level capstone design course. This paper illustrates a systematic approach across the entire CE program for the direct assessment of program outcomes. The civil engineering program outcomes reflect the current ABET 3a-k as well as the ASCE Body of Knowledge (BOK). The approach integrates existing grading practices and correlates the results with the desired program outcomes. This system of direct assessment provides a quantitative assessment without increasing faculty work load, by leveraging what is already being done in the evaluation and grading of student work. This technique uses embedded indicators, which are specific student performance events common to all students in the course such as homework problems, projects and tests. The program director and course directors identify potential embedded indicators that correlate strongly with the desired program outcomes. In addition to the embedded indicators, non-standard measures of program outcomes such as membership in the ASCE student chapter and performance on the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam are considered. The greatest benefit of using a well developed system of embedded indicators is to provide a quantitative assessment without increasing faculty workload. The quantitative assessment can then be used to validate an “anecdotal” assessment or identify areas for improvement that may not be readily apparent. This simple yet thorough assessment enables programs to spend time developing improvements or identifying needed resource re-allocation instead of collecting and compiling assessment data.