“EMbedding” the KEEN Framework: An Assessment Plan for Measuring ABET Student Outcomes and Entrepreneurial Mindset

John K. Estell

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Conference: 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual On line
Publication Date: June 22, 2020
Start Date: June 22, 2020
End Date: June 26, 2021
Conference Session: ENT Division Technical Session: Assessment Tools and Practices
Tagged Division: Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation
Page Count: 19
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--33968
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/33968
Download Count: 725

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John K. Estell Ohio Northern University

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An active member of ASEE for over 25 years, Dr. John K. Estell was elected in 2016 as a Fellow of ASEE in recognition of the breadth, richness, and quality of his contributions to the betterment of engineering education. Estell has held multiple ASEE leadership positions within the First-Year Programs (FPD) and Computers in Education (CoED) divisions, and with the Ad Hoc Committee on Interdivisional Cooperation, Interdivisional Town Hall Planning Committee, ASEE Active, and the Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Estell has received multiple ASEE Annual Conference Best Paper awards from the Computers in Education, First-Year Programs, and Design in Engineering Education Divisions. He has also been recognized by ASEE as the recipient of the 2005 Merl K. Miller Award and by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) with the 2018 ASEE Best Card Award. Estell received the First-Year Programs Division’s Distinguished Service Award in 2019.

Estell currently serves as an ABET Commissioner and as a subcommittee chair on ABET’s Accreditation Council Training Committee. He was previously a Member-At-Large on the Computing Accreditation Commission Executive Committee and a Program Evaluator for both computer engineering and computer science. Estell is well-known for his significant contributions on streamlining student outcomes assessment processes, and has been an invited presenter at the ABET Symposium on multiple occasions. Estell is also a founding member and current Vice President of The Pledge of the Computing Professional, an organization dedicated to the promotion of ethics in the computing professions.

Estell is Professor of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Ohio Northern University, where he currently teaches first-year programming and user interface design courses, and also serves on the college’s Capstone Design Committee. Much of his research involves design education pedagogy, including formative assessment of client-student interactions, modeling sources of engineering design constraints, and applying the entrepreneurial mindset to first-year programming projects through student engagement in educational software development. Estell earned his BS in Computer Science and Engineering degree from The University of Toledo and both his MS and PhD degrees in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Abstract

One of the issues that programs creating assessment plans face is with developing performance indicators in support of the ABET Student Outcomes. Constructing performance indicators from scratch can be, and usually is, a painful and laborious process. The program at decided to take a different approach.

Several presentations made at prior KEEN National Conferences have included references to the list of “extended KEEN Student Outcomes” developed by Ohio Northern University. Faculty at this institution have expanded upon the KEEN Framework by developing what they refer to as “specific, authentic learning objectives” from the “3 C’s” of the Entrepreneurial Mindset: Curiosity, Connections, and Creating Value. Additional learning objectives were developed from how the Entrepreneurial Mindset is expressed through both Collaboration and Communication, and how it is founded on Character. Collectively, these learning objectives were designed to translate the big picture of the KEEN Framework into smaller, actionable items that could enable more intentional scaffolding of the entrepreneurial mindset throughout that institution’s curricula.

When reviewing the set of extended KEEN Student Outcomes, it was noted that the learning objectives contained therein were actually a set of performance indicators: specific, measurable statements that help identify required student performance. When subsequently mapped to the recently updated ABET Student Outcomes for engineering programs, a significant number of the learning objectives were found to align with several of the student outcomes (an even stronger alignment was observed with the ABET Student Outcomes for computing programs). Accordingly, the aligned learning objectives contained within the extended KEEN Student Outcomes were adopted by the program at as their foundational set of performance indicators for their new ABET assessment plan. Additional performance indicators were obtained in a similar fashion by adopting learning objectives specified in the Body of Knowledge document to allow for more discipline-specific measures to be employed.

By using already available learning objectives as performance indicators in one’s student outcomes assessment process, a program can significantly reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to develop an assessment plan. This paper will illustrate the relationship between the extended KEEN Student Outcomes and the ABET Student Outcomes, examine how one plan can be used to evaluate the extent to which both sets of Outcomes are being attained, provide details regarding the processes used in developing the program’s assessment plan, and furnish tools that can be used by other institutions as part of a faculty buy-in process when developing their own similar assessment plan.

Citation
Format

Estell, J. K. (2020, June), “EMbedding” the KEEN Framework: An Assessment Plan for Measuring ABET Student Outcomes and Entrepreneurial Mindset Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--33968

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - One of the issues that programs creating assessment plans face is with developing performance indicators in support of the ABET Student Outcomes. Constructing performance indicators from scratch can be, and usually is, a painful and laborious process. The  program at  decided to take a different approach. 

Several presentations made at prior KEEN National Conferences have included references to the list of “extended KEEN Student Outcomes” developed by Ohio Northern University. Faculty at this institution have expanded upon the KEEN Framework by developing what they refer to as “specific, authentic learning objectives” from the “3 C’s” of the Entrepreneurial Mindset: Curiosity, Connections, and Creating Value. Additional learning objectives were developed from how the Entrepreneurial Mindset is expressed through both Collaboration and Communication, and how it is founded on Character. Collectively, these learning objectives were designed to translate the big picture of the KEEN Framework into smaller, actionable items that could enable more intentional scaffolding of the entrepreneurial mindset throughout that institution’s curricula. 

When reviewing the set of extended KEEN Student Outcomes, it was noted that the learning objectives contained therein were actually a set of performance indicators: specific, measurable statements that help identify required student performance. When subsequently mapped to the recently updated ABET Student Outcomes for engineering programs, a significant number of the learning objectives were found to align with several of the student outcomes (an even stronger alignment was observed with the ABET Student Outcomes for computing programs). Accordingly, the aligned learning objectives contained within the extended KEEN Student Outcomes were adopted by the  program at  as their foundational set of performance indicators for their new ABET assessment plan. Additional performance indicators were obtained in a similar fashion by adopting learning objectives specified in the  Body of Knowledge document to allow for more discipline-specific measures to be employed. 

By using already available learning objectives as performance indicators in one’s student outcomes assessment process, a program can significantly reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to develop an assessment plan. This paper will illustrate the relationship between the extended KEEN Student Outcomes and the ABET Student Outcomes, examine how one plan can be used to evaluate the extent to which both sets of Outcomes are being attained, provide details regarding the processes used in developing the  program’s assessment plan, and furnish tools that can be used by other institutions as part of a faculty buy-in process when developing their own similar assessment plan.

AU  - John K. Estell
CY  - Virtual On line 
DA  - 2020/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - “EMbedding” the KEEN Framework: An Assessment Plan for Measuring ABET Student Outcomes and Entrepreneurial Mindset
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/33968
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--33968
ER  -