Direct Outcome-Based Assessment Measures

Leaders from inside and outside the educational community are calling for an assessment of the quality of educational programs. These demands are being driven by the need to ensure that funding is being well spent and engineering students will be well prepared for a rapidly shifting global job market, as well as by the economic competitiveness this nation is facing. Engineering programs are fertile ground for this type of quality control, and as such they are being challenged to design an outcome assessment package. A set of measurement tools has been presented to assist programs in assessing how well their students have met the criteria and how these results must be tied into a larger set of conditions that promote academic improvement. These tools include accreditation, standard testing measures, capstone design courses, teacher evaluations, alumni achievements/satisfactions, student internship feedback, and career-services data. The development of an assessment program has been emphasized and described because such development is currently being demanded to demonstrate that a program is willing to take on its responsibility seriously to monitor the effectiveness of all aspects of its educational enterprise.