Special Section on Curriculum Assessment and Continuous Improvement

As ASCE’s outlet for scholarly research in engineering education, the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice (JPI) routinely receives, reviews, and publishes high-quality education research. This current edition is no exception. In fact, this edition contains a special section that highlights what exceptionally well executed education research can look like. Over one year ago, a call for papers was issued seeking research related to curriculum assessment and continuous improvement. The special section of this edition of JPI contains three exemplary manuscripts related to the topic.

As educators in the classroom and as administrators in higher education, we all have witnessed a shift towards increased assessment at a curriculum level and an emphasis on continuous improvement. Perhaps this change is the result of accreditation-driven reactions or perhaps it is merely the inherent desire for academic programs to be as good as…no perhaps even better than our peer institutions. Regardless of the motivation, on-going assessment and striving for improvement appears to be the norm of modern engineering education.

The forum, written by Tanya Kunberger, Kristine Csavina, and Robert O’Neill of Florida Gulf Coast University, is titled “Scaffolding Assessment from Lesson Objectives through Student Outcomes: Faculty Perspectives of a Viable Continuous Improvement Model.” Have you ever considered how you might structure your program’s assessment if you could start from scratch? In this piece, the authors discuss the unique opportunity they had to develop program-level assessment for a collection of new engineering programs. You might never find yourself in such a rare position of standing-up a new program, but after reading this article you may wish to migrate towards the progressive methods they adopted.

One of the technical papers, written by Ryan Solonsky, M. Kevin Parfitt, and Robert J. Holland of Pennsylvania State University, is titled “IPD and BIM–Focused Capstone Course Based on AEC Industry Needs and Involvement.” This article presents the results of a three-year multidisciplinary effort to meet industry’s demands for engineering graduates with building information modeling experience. It stands as a well-detailed record of continuous improvements with the end user’s needs at the forefront.

The other technical paper, written by Donald D. Carpenter (Lawrence Technological University), Trevor S. Harding (California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo), Janel A. Sutkus (Carnegie Mellon University), and Cynthia J. Finelli (University of Michigan) is titled “Assessing the Ethical Development of Civil Engineering Undergraduates in Support of the ASCE Body of Knowledge.” This prolific group of authors has written extensively on assessment of ethical development. In this article, they draw specific connections between findings of a large-scale (19 academic institutions) study and the ASCE Body of Knowledge. Some of their conclusions may run counter to preconceived notions you hold regarding civil engineering undergraduate students.

I trust you will find these articles to be useful inspiration in your efforts to perform curriculum assessment and to implement continuous improvement methods at your own academic institution. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to all of the authors for their willingness to make a submission to this special issue and their patience in the production process.