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Broad faculty participation in course-level evaluation of student outcomes supporting continuous improvement of an undergraduate engineering program

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Conference

ASEE 2021 Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference

Location

Waco, Texas

Publication Date

March 24, 2021

Start Date

March 24, 2021

End Date

March 26, 2021

Page Count

8

DOI

10.18260/1-2--36364

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/36364

Download Count

409

Paper Authors

biography

Randall D. Manteufel The University of Texas at San Antonio

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Dr. Randall Manteufel is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). He has won several teaching awards, including the 2012 University of Texas System Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award and the 2013 UTSA President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching Excellence, the 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2019 College of Engineering Student Council Professor of the Year Award, 2008 Excellence in Teaching Award for College of Engineering, and 2004-2005 Mechanical Engineering Instructor of the year award, 1999 ASEE-GSW Outstanding New Faculty Award. Dr. Manteufel is a Fellow of ASME with teaching and research interests in the thermal sciences. In 2015-2016, he chaired the American Society for Engineering Education Gulf Southwest section and in 2018-2019 he chaired the Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars at UTSA. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Texas.

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biography

Amir Karimi P.E. The University of Texas at San Antonio

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Amir Karimi, University of Texas, San Antonio
Amir Karimi is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). He received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kentucky in 1982. His teaching and research interests are in thermal sciences. He has served as the Chair of Mechanical Engineering (1987 to 1992 and September 1998 to January of 2003), College of Engineering Associate Dean of Academic Affairs (Jan. 2003-April 2006), and the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies (April 2006-September 2013). Dr. Karimi is a Fellow of ASEE, a Fellow of ASME, senior member of AIAA, and holds membership in ASHRAE, and Sigma Xi. He has served as the ASEE Campus Representative at UTSA, ASEE-GSW Section Campus Representative, and served as the Chair of ASEE Zone III (2005-07). He chaired the ASEE-GSW section during the 1996-97 academic year.

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Abstract

As part of the ABET accreditation process, each engineering program is to have a continuous improvement process by which the program student outcomes (SO) are evaluated and used to as input to program changes, especially changes in the curriculum. One part of the process is course-level assessment of SO. Some programs place a heavy reliance on senior-level engineering design courses to assess the student outcomes and little reliance on many other engineering courses. A potential shortcoming of this is that faculty teaching courses know little about the continuous improvement process and miss the opportunity to document contributions to the attainment of student outcomes. A different approach is that each required undergraduate engineering course provide some input into the continuous improvement process. The goal is to not overly burden a few classes with many assessment of SO, but to spread the collection and analysis of SO to many classes. Other than capstone senior design classes, each required class collects and analyzes data for only two SO although many courses address more than two. Over many years, the curriculum committee has worked to distribute the SO throughout the program so that there isn’t an imbalance with many courses providing data for a SO while few courses contributing to another SO. This mapping of SO throughout the curriculum is evaluate and adjusted at the beginning of an assessment cycle. Overall, each course has a reduced documentation load and more faculty become involved in the continuous improvement process. This broader participation has encouraged faculty to document topics in their courses which have normally gone undocumented. A continual challenge is to help faculty plan their course so the collection of data is manageable and not left to the end of the semester. Examples of how to assess each SO have been generated by the curriculum committee and shared with faculty to inspire them to think beyond the use of final exam questions to assess SO in their courses.

Manteufel, R. D., & Karimi, A. (2021, March), Broad faculty participation in course-level evaluation of student outcomes supporting continuous improvement of an undergraduate engineering program Paper presented at ASEE 2021 Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference, Waco, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--36364

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