Measuring Continuous Improvement In Engineering Educational Programs: A Graphical Approach

This paper presents a method for developing assessment metrics that can be used to efficiently reduce survey data to a format that facilitates quick and accurate faculty feedback as part of an EC 2000 continuous improvement process. Our methodology, the Pitt-SW Analysis, is an adaptation of the competitive strategy principle of SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities and threats). It consists of four steps – data collection, data summarization, display of proportions, and construction of a Strengths and Weakness (SW) table by the application of rules that reflect the desired sensitivity of the methodology. The results of the SW table can be displayed graphically using basic symbols to highlight and track changes in students’ perceptions. In this way, student progress towards meeting the program’s EC 2000 objectives can be monitored and fed back to faculty. We have tested the method using 1999 and 2000 academic year data to track four student cohorts. The results have been highly consistent and indicate the usefulness of this methodology to efficiently measure student performance.