. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Purdue, Mississippi State, and North Carolina A&T. He received his B.S. from West Point in 1966 and his Ph.D. from Purdue in 1975. He is a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute, and a senior ABET Program Evaluator. Page 25.313.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2012 Civil Engineering Program Evaluator Reflections: The Most Recent Lessons LearnedAbstractFor the 2011-2012 ABET accreditation cycle, a number of changes
using the results to make changes and continuously improve theprogram. Most engineering programs have now been through two cycles of accreditation underthe new system. There have been some growing pains, adjustments, and changes to theaccreditation process since it was initially implemented.This paper is in direct response to the session proposed by the CE Division of ASEE on thereflections of ABET over the past ten years from the perspective of program directors, programevaluators and members of the ASCE Committee on Curricula and Accreditation. This paperoffers the perspectives and reflections from a full professor who has directed two differentprograms (Civil Engineering and Architectural Engineering) at two different locations
passing rates for some student work, thus fostering greater leaps inimprovement of learning in those outcomes. Team review of student work also facilitates greaterlevels of cooperation and more frequent deliberate communication between faculty members andindustry colleagues, ultimately enhancing student learning through the sharing of ideas betweenthese two groups.Findings are reported as: (1) a comparison of passing rate statistics before and after inclusion of industry raters, (2) reflections on the process by both industry and faculty raters, and (3) reflections on the process by the administrators of the rating.We recommend that other institutes consider use of industry raters for student outcomes becauseof the enhanced continuous improvement
for Engineering Education, 2012 Survey of Civil Engineering Assessment Changes in Response to Revised ABET CE Program Criteria1. AbstractIn 2008, ABET, Inc. revised the “Program Criteria for Civil Engineering (CE)” included in theCriteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs to better reflect the Civil Engineering Body ofKnowledge for the 21st Century. CE faculty at Southern Illinois University Edwardsvilleconducted a nationwide survey during the summer of 2011 using the American Society of CivilEngineers‟ Department Heads Council list serve to determine if other CE Departments weremaking changes in their programs or assessment plans in response to the revised criteria. In theUS there are 224 accredited CE
models. Thispaper addresses the process followed by the NCEES to make these modifications. It describesthe history, the lessons learned as perceived by the authors, and the next steps forimplementation of the new educational standards. It also includes the experiences, observations,reflections, and opinions of the authors: four individuals who participated in the process ofchanging the NCEES models.IntroductionThe practice of engineering is regulated through licensure in all 50 states, the District ofColumbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Each of these 54 jurisdictions has itsown statutes and rules that establish licensure requirements to practice engineering(qualifications) and how that practice is conducted (procedures and
proposed change and its features. The second “H” is for heart in that some ofthose who understand will commit to supporting the change. The second “A” represents actionmeaning that some of the committed will act to effect the proposed change.Test-Drive TerminologyThe strategy and tactics employed to achieve a goal or vision should include sensitivity to howthe various stakeholders might respond to the language used to describe the change. Words thatseem appropriate to change leaders may be misunderstood or even viewed negatively by others.This is exactly what happened early in Raise the Bar effort and the subsequent desire to findacceptable terminology led to increased emphasis on using the term BOK. Reflect on MarkTwain’s thought, “The difference
. civil engineering community: faculty development, integration of the civil engineering curriculum, practitioner involvement in education, and the professional degree.1The fourth of these issue areas—the professional degree—reflected a growing consensus that thetraditional four-year baccalaureate degree was becoming increasingly inadequate as formalacademic preparation for the professional practice of civil engineering. In October 1998, the callfor action issued at the CEEC ’95 resulted in the passage of ASCE Policy Statement 465—Academic Prerequisites for Licensure and Professional Practice. The initial version of thispolicy stated that the Society “supports the concept of the master’s degree as the FirstProfessional Degree
) publication of several strategic vision documents thatcalled for future engineers to develop certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes that had not beenincluded in BOK1. As a result, a second edition of the Civil Engineering BOK was initiated inOctober 2005 and published in February 2008. The Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge for the Page 25.1330.721st Century, Second Edition,10 (abbreviated BOK2) incorporates two particularly substantivechanges from the first edition: • The number of outcomes was increased from 15 to 24. To some extent, this increase reflects the BOK2 authors’ attempt to enhance clarity and specificity, rather than to
experience should demonstrate to thelicensing jurisdiction or other reviewing authorities the capacity of the engineering intern toreview the applications of engineering principles by others and to assume responsibility forengineering work of a professional character at a level that will protect the public health, safetyand welfare. The EI’s experience in attaining a particular experiential outcome may not, in itself,reflect progressive experience. However, attainment of the ensemble of fifteen experientialoutcomes must demonstrate progressive experience.Responsibilities of the Engineer InternThe fulfillment and demonstration of attainment of the experiential outcomes is the responsibilityof the EI. Throughout various work environments and project
accredited since 1936) and an MS in EnvironmentalEngineering (accredited since 2003). The BSCE will be the focus of this paper.Historically the program outcomes for the BSCE reproduced (verbatim) ABET criterion 3a-k. In2002 the outcomes were restated with increased specificity to civil engineering; three additionaloutcomes were added to reflect then-current civil engineering basic level program criteria. Alloutcomes were written in the style of ABET “EC 2000.” In 2010, following the release of theBOK2 report in 2008, a comprehensive review of the BSCE curriculum was conducted—with aparticular emphasis on establishing student learning outcomes throughout the curriculum.Course-by-course student learning outcomes were developed and stated in a format
traditional four-year baccalaureate degree.4 Consequently,Policy 465 specifies that the prerequisites for licensure should be (1) a baccalaureate degree incivil engineering, (2) a master’s degree or approximately 30 graduate or upper-levelundergraduate credits, and (3) appropriate progressive, structured engineering experience.ASCE is currently attempting to influence state laws to reflect the increased educationalrequirement for licensure. In 2006, with ASCE’s strong support, the National Council ofExaminers for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) modified its Model Law and Model Rulespertaining to engineering licensure.5 The revised Model Law and Rules state that admission tothe engineering licensing exam will require an accredited bachelor’s degree
required performance to succeed in engineering. The reasonsresulting their failing or dropping out of engineering may include: (1) lack of motivation andinterest in learning engineering; (2) lack of good learning habits, strategies and efforts in theirstudies; and (3) lack of connection with other students and faculty members for seeking support.This paper presents a new instructional framework that integrates SRL process model into courseinstruction. The integrative instruction is to simulate four phases of SRL in series of self-directedfeedback cycles, and to prompt application of learning strategies and self-reflection at thedifferent phases of learning and problem-solving process. This is implemented throughintegrating self-assessment
thedepartment’s course lesson plans in the late 1980’s. Assessment of student learning aboutapplication of sustainable design principles became a specific criterion of the engineering impactstudent outcome in the department’s assessment plan in 2008.Results of student work assessment presented in the paper demonstrate that, although studentscould reflect thoughtfully on sustainability principles, they struggled to demonstrate rational,comprehensive application of these principles to the design process. The evidence suggested adifferent approach to learning sustainable design was needed. Dialogue with practitioners andindustry experts reminded the department that sustainable design is just “good engineering” thathas been present in the curriculum for
, knowledgebuilding supports the intentional, reflective, and metacognitive engagement required for deeplearning. In a knowledge-building environment the focus of the learning community is on Page 25.351.4continually improving ideas. It begins with a question of understanding, such as, Could acomputer ever have feelings? The next step is to encourage learners to generate and post theirideas about the topic (typically in an asynchronous, online group workspace such as provided byKnowledge Forum software). In the process the community organizes itself into working groupsthat grow and change in response to the interests of learners. The workspace preserves
videos, and web resources. Andthen, they reflect on their understanding of main concepts by trying out a reading quiz that hasbeen revised to focus on main concepts of the week. When they complete the reading quiz with100% success, the access to an assignment is released. The second part of learning materialssuch as instructor’s notes about important points, problem-solving demonstration videos, andpublisher’s resources is tied into a problem-solving activity through an assignment inBlackboardTM. When students achieve at least 50% of success on the assignment, the access to aweekly test is released. The 50% success on the weekly assignment is determined so that amoderate level of understanding is accomplished without making it prohibitive for
they are a typical workplace writing task, but research rarely explicitly addresses howwriting tips reflect what practitioners actually write. Some instructors have substantialexperience in industry, but others do not.As Donnell, Aller, Alley, and Kedrowicz have argued, a much-needed step in improvinginstruction concerns determining the specific characteristics of successful engineeringcommunication for different settings, whether in academia or industry. 9 They warn about thedifficulties of interpreting what is said by managers in surveys. A more direct route tounderstanding the features of workplace writing is to study the writing itself. We therefore haveundertaken a project to collect writing from numerous civil engineering firms and
to determine the oral presentation grade. Near the completion of the course, the attributes and characteristics sheets originally prepared and submitted by each student, but now including all of the comments from their group members evaluating the student‟s performance as PM, are complied and given back to the students. Therefore, at the conclusion of the course, students have a clear record of their individual performance as PMs as measured against their own initial list of the attributes and characteristics of a ‘good’ PM. This seems to be an extremely effective summary document as part of this approach to introducing, stressing and measuring project management performance.Student Reflections
appear broad, it is reflective of the variety of activities and roles that civilengineers undertake. The BOK was thus designed to accommodate the wide-ranging nature ofthe practice within the discipline.Since the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) first published the BOK report in 2004and the BOK2 report in 2008 , numerous papers have been written about this effort. Asignificant number of papers on the Body of Knowledge have been submitted to the AmericanSociety of Engineering Education’s (ASEE’s) Annual Conference and Exposition. Much of thatliterature is discussed and synthesized herein.Student perceptions of the BOK2 are of particular interest in the academic realm. A studyconducted by Bielefeldt at the University of Colorado at
for thisquestion was: more rigorous (3 Points), similar in rigor (2 Points) and less rigorous (1 Points).Students were also asked to comment on whether the level of rigor of the class was view as apositive or negative. The remaining questions about specific perceptions of the profession werescored on a five point Likert scale with five points being most agreeable. For these questions,students could also provide a “Don’t Know” response that was coded as a null value. Allquestions were coded so that higher values reflected more positively on the transportationprofession than lower values. For all questions, improvements in the students’ perceptions of thetransportation field are indicated in final survey values that are higher than the initial
data that reflected students’ knowledge of highwaydesign as derived from their day-to-day experience as drivers rather than from a highway designexperience. Finally, the survey ended with a set of four questions targeting students’ perceptionson the driving simulator as a learning and design tool. Students had to indicate their agreementon statements that proposed the driving simulator to be: a) an engaging highway design tool, b) agreat tool for analyzing highway design, c) an effective tool for testing highway design, and d) amotivating tool for learning highway design. For these perception questions students used aLikert evaluation scale ranging from “1” for strongly disagree to “5” for strongly agree.The exit survey included all of the
“horizontal integration with non-engineering disciplines” (two of the issues we faced) aschallenges faced in multidisciplinary environments for which limited information is to be foundin the literature.7We believe there are three main reasons that the multidisciplinary teams did not function at thelevel we had envisioned. First, there is not equal inducement to both sets of students, since onegroup is approaching this course as a general education class and the other group is approachingit as a class in their major. Consequently, this creates a difference in attitude and hence per-ceived importance for these projects. There are very different incentives for each group of stu-dents. The difference in perceived importance was also reflected in the
integrated building design, has received moreattention in the instruction and the assessments show that the course has been verysuccessful in meeting this goal. The large and small lectures, described in the previoussection are typically on technical topics and the students incorporate this material in theirprojects. In addition, as is seen in the Grading section of this paper, the majority of thegrading reflects the building design and construction.The second learning objective, function effectively on an interdisciplinary team, has beenaddressed to a lesser extent. A lecture on personality types and the consideration ofpersonality types in the formation of student teams provided some basis for discussionson teamwork. Some quarters have
, allowing sufficient time (at least 2 weeks) for collaborations to occur, andincorporating icebreaker activities to bring familiarity to groups that are unable to meet inperson.AcknowledgmentsThe assistance of Mr. Gary Welling, Mr. Gregory Olsen, Mr. Daniel Pitts, Mr. SamuelWheeler, Mr. Kirk Vandersall, and Dr. Nazli Yesiller is acknowledged. This material isbased on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DUE-0817570. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in thismaterial are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NationalScience Foundation.References1. Holland, M. P. (1998). “Collaborative technologies in inter-university instruction,” Journal of theA merican
, Steel, Inc., Atlanta Demolition, PaulLee and by the volunteer efforts of many students, faculty, and community partners. Thanks toall the faculty members who have encouraged students for participating in this project. Anyopinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those ofthe author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Southern Polytechnic State University orother project sponsors. Page 25.52.12Bibliography 1. Nations, U. (2010). Haiti Earthquake: Situation Updates. Retrieved 12 30, 2011, from UN News Centre: http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/haiti/haiti_quake_update.shtml 2
examination question which required some form ofapplication, inference or analysis.9From their first days in an academic environment, students are trained to study for examinationsand often use memorization.12 Beyond that, the practice most students get in math based coursesare focused on the fundamental concepts and thus exist as in-class or homework problems wherethe student takes given variables and uses newly- learned concepts and solves for an answer.“Standard exercises ask students to carry out mathematical procedures, not to think aboutthem.”13 Hubbard notes that exercises involve substituting into a formula and carrying out a listof procedures which rarely ask students to reflect on the results or extend thought beyond thenumerical answer
c American Society for Engineering Education, 2012 Integrating The Charrette Process into Engineering Education: A Case Study on a Civil Engineering Capstone CourseABSTRACTAs engineering educators rethink the structure and value of capstone courses, many have turnedto practical applications. In order to reflect the recent approaches within engineering, capstonecourses can be enhanced through the integration of charrettes. Charrettes are hands-on,collaborative sessions where stakeholders come to a design consensus. These sessions provideopportunities for students to improve communication, technical evaluation, teamwork, peerevaluation and professionalism skills. This research provides a framework for adapting thecharrette
revolve around the delicate balance that must bemaintained between educating and graduating engineering students who are suitably prepared forprofessional practice in engineering fields without adding credit hours to undergraduate programrequirements.Recent changes in the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) criteria forCivil Engineering graduates require that students be able to address Civil Engineering problemsin terms of global and societal context3, 4. New outcomes include educating students who areaware of contemporary issues and capable of effectively using modern engineering tools. Thesenew requirements reflect the changing role of the Civil Engineer in society, and ABET’srecognition that stakeholder expectations must
verbatim material that can then be appropriately quoted6. evaluate a website for authority, reliability, credibility, purpose, viewpoint, and suitability7. reflect on past successes, failures, and alternative strategies by maintaining a log of information seeking and evaluating activities8. communicate clearly and with a style that supports the purposes of the intended audience9. demonstrate an understanding of intellectual property, copyright, and fair use of copyrighted material10. select an appropriate documentation style and use it consistently to cite sources11. confer with instructors and participate in class discussions to identify a research topic, or other information needed12. define or modify the information need to achieve a
captured on a digital audiorecording. All students consented according to the university policy on human subjects socialscience research.To open the focus group discussion, the facilitator asked the students to reflect about the pre-class assignments and quizzes. In general, tell me your thoughts about the pre-class assignments and quizzes. The consensus was that the pre-class assignments and quizzes were beneficial because class time could be spent on examples. However, students thought the quantity of assignments was excessive; that turning in a paper each class was too much even though this was helpful to work on the material. Students admitted that the pre-reading would not have been done if it was not required.The first discussion
Little 36 21% Not at All 55 32% Figure 2. Summary of initial impressions.In summary, while half or more of the respondents found it to be at least somewhat attractive,functional, and thought-provoking, most of the participants found it to be more reflective oftechnical issues than social or environmental issues. The researchers hypothesized that thiswould change once they were presented with the background information on the sculpture. Page 25.1125.8Final ImpressionsAfter completing the pre-survey, respondents were given a one-half page