Thursday, April 19, 2012
This year, we're offering eight Pre-Symposium Workshops; four in the morning and four in the afternoon. The $80 fee for each workshop includes all materials.
Morning Workshops: 9 AM-12 PM
Creating a Culture of Assessment:
Facilitating Change at Your Institution
James Warnock
Adjunct Director, Educational Research and Assessment, ABET; Associate Professor, Bio Engineering, Mississippi State University
Understanding both the program assessment process and group facilitation methods are necessary skills, but on their own are not sufficient to create sustainable change processes. In this workshop, you'll explore the basic principles of change management and learn how to apply them to your own program and institutions' cultures.
A Direct Method for Teaching and Measuring Engineering Professional Skills at both Course and Program Levels
Steve Beyerlein
Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Idaho, Moscow
Jay McCormack
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of Idaho, Moscow
Edwin Schmeckpeper
Chair, Associate Professor, Civil Engineering, Norwich University
Proficiency in professional skills is critical to success in the multidisciplinary, intercultural team interactions that characterize 21st century technical careers. Yet, programs have struggled to define, teach and measure professional skills since they were introduced as ABET criteria.
The Engineering Professional Skills Assessment (EPSA) is a direct assessment method centered on one of several inter-disciplinary scenarios that frame a contemporary societal problem, a generalized set of discussion questions intended to guide a meaningful, 45 minute discussion of multiple scenarios among 4-6 students, and the Engineering Professional Skills rubric that is broadly applicable for all scenarios. In this mini-workshop, participants will examine one scenario in detail along with self-scoring and peer-scoring of a scenario discussion among workshop participants. This experience will be structured to produce small-group and large-group insights about administering and scoring the EPSA in classroom situations. The intended audience for this workshop includes faculty who teach courses identified for collecting data on ABET professional skills, ABET coordinators from the entire spectrum of engineering programs, and ABET engineering program evaluators. This ASEE award winning method is presented by members of the NSF sponsored leadership team conducting a rigorous validity study across 3 institutions and 5 disciplines.
Incorporating Occupational Safety and Health
into the Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum
Pamela Heckel
Senior Service Fellow, NIOSH
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is leading the Prevention through Design (PtD) Initiative to eliminate hazards and reduce risks for workers. The PtD team uses a multi-pronged strategy:
- creating content for textbooks
- developing educational modules
- influencing industry standards
- conducting a student PtD contest, and
- working with stakeholders in academia to meet the ABET Criterion 3. C.
This workshop demonstrates how PtD concepts can be integrated into the undergraduate capstone experience with particular focus on the Purdue University Engineer of 2020 (E2020) Initiative, which prepares Purdue Engineers for global technological, societal, and economic challenges of the 21st Century. The educational experience includes interdisciplinary PtD concepts that foster creativity, innovation, and flexibility to derive safe and healthful design solutions from manufacturing to the end user.
Workshop on Program Assessment –
Quick and Easy From your Desktop PC
James Allert
Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota, Duluth
If you're involved in program assessment planning, implementation and reporting processes and you're looking for a tool to quickly synthesize course-level data into program-level reports, this workshop is for you.
The first hour covers program assessment needs using specific, rubric-based examples of course evaluations and other data collection tools, such as alumni surveys. The form and content of program reports will be covered as well as examples that relate program reports to course and non-course data sources.
The second hour introduces an Excel spreadsheet program designed to integrate course-level data into program-level reports easily and quickly, without specialized programming skills.
The third hour will be one-on-one work with participants to show how this spreadsheet can address their specific data needs. Participants are encouraged to bring sample data sets.
Afternoon Workshops: 2 PM-5 PM
Creating High Impact Graphics to Capture Your Assessment Data and Results for Stakeholders, Continuous Improvement, and Accreditation
Karen Tarnoff
Assistant Dean for Assurance of Learning and Assessment, East Tennessee State University
Most individuals who are responsible for the design and implementation of assessment systems dedicate themselves to the definition of learning outcomes and objectives, the design or acquisition of measures, and the collection of data, only to arrive at a point - data in hand - where they are unsure of how to best present the data to faculty and accreditation teams.
This session will present a simple, yet powerful approach to creating high impact graphics that clearly and concisely present assessment data so that faculty and evaluators alike can easily identify strengths, weaknesses, trends and possible improvements. The result is a single set of graphics that can be used both in continuous improvement and for accreditation.
Developing and Implementing a Sustainable Assessment Plan
Matthew Dettman
James D. Scott Professor of Civil Engineering, Western Kentucky University
This workshop will cover tools and techniques to develop a complete assessment plan for ABET outcomes a-k. Topics include the development of performance criteria and rubrics for each outcome, samples of direct and indirect assessment methods, and hands-on exercises to utilize information presented in the presentation. A complete assessment plan will be presented to show how all of these tools work together and how it can be presented in a self-study report.
Using IDEALS to Demonstrate a Program's Development of Professional Skills
Patricia Brackin
Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Professional skills are vital to preparing engineers for their careers. Students are expected to develop these skills during their capstone design experience. However, many capstone design faculty are uncertain about defining, developing and assessing their students' professional skills.
The IDEALS team has defined the relevant professional skills as learning outcomes, prepared learning materials for these topics, and created assessments for measuring and enhancing the achievement of professional skills. This workshop defines the learning outcomes, demonstrates the modules for instruction along with the assessment instruments, and presents results obtained from using this web-based system. Preliminary data show that the modules improve student learning and instructor satisfaction.
Participants will review the modules, evaluate sample student work, and discuss program results from a case study.
Using Project Management to Create Your Self-Study and Prepare for the Visit
James Conrad
Associate Professor, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
The ABET evaluation visit is one of your department's most important activities. Why leave the preparation to chance? Make the most of the limited time between the self-study and the visit in order to fully document your department's commitment to undergraduate education.
By using established project management principles such as planning, risk assessment, communications, and reporting, you can represent your program beyond the material included in the self-study. This session will highlight the steps you can take to prepare for the visit, including developing a project plan for preparing the display room and materials. This session will also describe how to engage your faculty in materials preparation.