Engineering - Other (59) This is a project to complete a promising research agenda focused on the assessment of engineering education and funded initially by the Engineering Education and Centers Action Agenda initiative (EEC 9872498). Specifically, the critical problem of how to best assure that engineering students receive a quality education is being addressed through outcomes assessment. With the introduction of the ABET EC2000 accreditation criteria, engineering faculty must develop and implement systems for continuous improvement. The project is involving a multidisciplinary team from five universities: Colorado School of Mines, Columbia University, University of Pittsburgh, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and the University of Washington. The objectives are to identify and evaluate a variety of methodologies for assessing engineering education and to provide engineering educators with a comprehensive set of attributes to describe student learning outcomes, identify existing instruments for each method to assess student achievement outcomes, and develop instruments where none can be found. The particular focus of this phase of the project is to use triangulation experiments using multiple assessment methodologies to measure specific undergraduate outcomes on student cohorts at all five institutions. The research is intended to determine which methods are most effective for particular outcomes as well as to better understand how engineering students progress toward achieving stated learning outcome objectives over the course of their undergraduate education. All findings and materials from this work will continue to be available at www.engrng.pitt.edu/~ec2000/
