Evaluating ABET Student Outcome (3) in a  Multidisciplinary Capstone Project Sequence

Nicholas A. Baine; Karl Brakora; Christopher P. Pung

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) Technical Session 10
Tagged Division: Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED)
Page Count: 10
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--43419
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/43419
Download Count: 283

Paper Authors

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Nicholas A. Baine Grand Valley State University

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Nicholas Baine, Ph.D., P.E., is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at Grand Valley State University. His expertise is in the design of electrical control systems and sensor data fusion. As an instructor, he specializes in teaching first-year courses, probability and signal modeling, and control systems. He has also been active in ASEE, serving on the board of the North Central Section, and publishing papers on a variety of topics which include ABET accreditation and first-year course design.

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Karl Brakora Grand Valley State University

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Karl Brakora is an Assistant Professor in the area of electrical engineering at Grand Valley State University. He previously worked for small companies and as an independent defense contractor to develop advanced ceramic materials, radar, and novel electronic fabrication methods applied to the development of guided munitions, electro-optic imaging systems, and medical devices. At GVSU he maintains electronic prototyping courses and co-created the School of Engineering’s professional ethics curriculum, which has become his primary academic focus. Karl received his Ph.D. in Applied Electromagnetics from the University of Michigan.

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Christopher P. Pung P.E. Grand Valley State University

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Dr. Pung has interests in experiential learning, design processes and student teams.

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Abstract

In 2017, ABET published a revised list of student outcomes detailed under ABET General Criterion 3, which replaced outcomes (a) through (k) with outcomes (1) through (7). The revised student outcomes place greater emphasis on measuring students’ ability to consider a wide range of factors in engineering situations and to be able to communicate and work with a wider range of stakeholders. Outcome (3) is like the previous criterion’s outcome (g), which requires that students have “an ability to communicate effectively”. This paper describes an assessment method for the current ABET student outcome (3), which assesses “…an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.” The capstone project sequence at is well-suited to assess students’ ability to communicate with a wide range of audiences due to their interactions within a team, with a customer, and the general public at the conclusion of their project. To complicate the assessment, ABET requires each program to be assessed independently without data from students of different majors, even when students with multiple majors take the same course. 's emphasis on the use of multidisciplinary teams drawn from multiple engineering programs and interacting with a wide variety of people including the public makes this an ideal opportunity to assess outcome (3), but it also complicates the disaggregation of data.

The assessment tools presented in this paper use faculty advisor evaluations to measure key elements of communication for outcome (3) in a multidisciplinary industry-sponsored design and build project. These elements include Clarity & Audience Focus, Organization, Presentation Mechanics, Visual Aid Usage, Professionalism, Style, and Format. This assessment tool disaggregates team performance data to determine an independent metric for each program major while preserving the multidisciplinary nature of the capstone projects. Data from the capstone sequence at is used to demonstrate these methods. The result of the methods detailed in the paper is a clear, stable, and independent metric that can be used to assess outcome (3) for each program major in a multidisciplinary capstone project.

Citation
Format

Baine, N. A., & Brakora, K., & Pung, C. P. (2023, June), Evaluating ABET Student Outcome (3) in a Multidisciplinary Capstone Project Sequence Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43419

TY - CPAPER
AB - In 2017, ABET published a revised list of student outcomes detailed under ABET General Criterion 3, which replaced outcomes (a) through (k) with outcomes (1) through (7). The revised student outcomes place greater emphasis on measuring students’ ability to consider a wide range of factors in engineering situations and to be able to communicate and work with a wider range of stakeholders. Outcome (3) is like the previous criterion’s outcome (g), which requires that students have “an ability to communicate effectively”. This paper describes an assessment method for the current ABET student outcome (3), which assesses “…an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.”
The capstone project sequence at is well-suited to assess students’ ability to communicate with a wide range of audiences due to their interactions within a team, with a customer, and the general public at the conclusion of their project. To complicate the assessment, ABET requires each program to be assessed independently without data from students of different majors, even when students with multiple majors take the same course. &#39;s emphasis on the use of multidisciplinary teams drawn from multiple engineering programs and interacting with a wide variety of people including the public makes this an ideal opportunity to assess outcome (3), but it also complicates the disaggregation of data.

The assessment tools presented in this paper use faculty advisor evaluations to measure key elements of communication for outcome (3) in a multidisciplinary industry-sponsored design and build project. These elements include Clarity &amp;amp; Audience Focus, Organization, Presentation Mechanics, Visual Aid Usage, Professionalism, Style, and Format. This assessment tool disaggregates team performance data to determine an independent metric for each program major while preserving the multidisciplinary nature of the capstone projects. Data from the capstone sequence at is used to demonstrate these methods. The result of the methods detailed in the paper is a clear, stable, and independent metric that can be used to assess outcome (3) for each program major in a multidisciplinary capstone project.
AU - Nicholas A. Baine
AU - Karl Brakora
AU - Christopher P. Pung P.E.
CY - Baltimore , Maryland
DA - 2023/06/25
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Evaluating ABET Student Outcome (3) in a Multidisciplinary Capstone Project Sequence
UR - https://peer.asee.org/43419
DO - 10.18260/1-2--43419
ER -