Continuous Improvement Of Environmental Engineering Curriculum In A Ce Accredited Program

The development of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Body of Knowledge (BOK) guidelines for assessment of program outcomes provides an excellent backdrop for monitoring and improving environmental engineering curriculum in a CE accredited program. A department wide process has been developed which allows faculty to monitor individual student learning as well as tracking changes made to course and curriculum level improvements. On an individual student basis, embedded indicators have been designed based on Bloom's taxonomy and are used to collectively measure student’s cognitive performance as it relates to specific course goals. This process has been developed over the past several years and is currently in the first phase of adjustment and refinement. A systematic means of mapping previously adopted individual learning objectives to specific course goals for the four environmental engineering courses contained in the program is discussed in this paper. On the course and curriculum level improvements, a process has been developed to readily categorize types of changes being instituted and then tracking them from year to year. This process has served to facilitate a productive environment for data driven decision-making by the department and its faculty in lieu of anecdotally based approaches. The objective of this paper is to provide a useful summary as to how instructional material and course goals for environmental engineering courses contained within an undergraduate civil engineering curriculum are efficiently mapped, measured, evaluated and improved in support of quantifiable program outcome assessment. This paper identifies and delineates adopted departmental procedures used to facilitate systematic curriculum decision making, produce readily usable assessment documentation and sustain evidencebased collective faculty efforts occurring along a productive continuous improvement continuum. Introduction/Background In today’s prevailing assessment-driven atmosphere of engineering education, faculty are being placed under increased demands to measurably link course instruction and student learning to curriculum-wide program outcomes. In addition, course modifications and curriculum improvements need to be implemented systematically within a transparent and documented manner that embodies the ideas of continuous improvement. Furthermore, it is not enough to merely measure outcomes and manage on-going modifications, effective civil engineering programs need to be able to plot a course of action on a broader horizon guiding change to achieve a vision of what the program should become over a 5 or 10 year period. The process has been created and implemented by faculty within the department to address important aspects of assessment within an efficient framework of documentation and decision making. This paper contains a discussion of these assessment components within the context of the four environmental engineering classes contained within the department’s undergraduate P ge 13333.2 curriculum. Specific aspects of the process and corresponding assessment oriented results are summarized along with supporting data and explanatory tabulations. A critically important framework for assessment of civil engineering programs was established by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) that further expanded on ABET criteria to institute a Body of Knowledge (BOK) for civil engineering graduates. The ASCE-BOK [1] promulgates a wide variety of academic ideas and philosophies, including use of 15 program outcomes comprised of the eleven contained in ABET Criteria 3 a-k, and four additional outcomes on specialized areas of civil engineering; project management, construction, and asset management; business and public policy; and leadership. Table 1 includes a list of all 15 program outcome criteria identifying both ABET and corresponding ASCE-BOK designations. For the purposes of this paper, program outcome criteria will be referenced based on ASCE-BOK designations (1-15). In addition to program outcomes, ASCE-BOK promotes adoption of six levels of Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy to establish levels of competency students should attain across specified program outcomes. The six levels of Bloom’s taxonomy are summarized as follows [2]: • Knowledge consists of facts, conventions, definitions, jargon, technical terms, classification, categories, and criteria. • Comprehension the ability to understand and grasp the meaning of material, but not necessarily to solve problems or relate it to other material. • Application the use of abstract ideas in particular concrete situations. • Analysis consists of breaking down complex problems into parts. • Synthesis involves taking pieces and putting them together to make a new whole. • Evaluation a judgment about a solution, process, design, report, material and so forth using expertise/experience in the area. Table 1 ABET/ASCE-BOK Comparison [1]