Supplementary Materials

Purpose: This page presents various on-line materials relevant to the accreditation evaluation of the BS-CSE program. We hope it will be of some use to members of the accreditation evaluation team prior to and during the site visit. Please send suggestions for changes to neelam AT cse.ohio-state.edu

Page organization and terminology: This page is organized according to the main categories of the CAC and EAC accreditation criteria: Students; Program Objectives; Program Outcomes, Assessment, and Feedback; Curriculum; Faculty; Computing Facilities; Institutional Facilities (classrooms and libraries).

The term program objectives is used, as per EAC guidelines, to mean statements that describe the accomplishments that the program is preparing graduates to achieve in the years following graduation; the term program outcomes is used to mean statements that describe what students are expected to know or be able to do by the time of graduation. Please see the main accreditation-related page for full details.

Note: It should be stressed that these materials are intended to supplement, not replace, the information in the self-study documents, and in the course-materials-display.

1. Students:

1. Program Requirements: Information regarding program requirements etc.:
   • BS-CSE on-line brochure (printable brochure). The main page of the BS-CSE on-line brochure contains links to the program curriculum, prerequisites for admission to the major, graduation procedures, etc. The menu on the left side of the page contains links to pages that provide complete information about all aspects of the program.
   • College's on-line brochure (click on "Current Students")

2. Courses: Information regarding courses is available to the students in the following pages:
   • Syllabi of CSE courses
   • Syllabi of ECE courses
   • Syllabi of Math courses.

3. Frequency of course offerings: Most required courses are offered several times a year, typically at least once in each quarter of the academic year; several are also offered during the Summer quarter. Elective courses are offered one or more times a year depending on the demand for the course. The following links point to pages containing the schedules of CSE course offerings for Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn 2005. These pages were culled from the official university schedules (a link to that also appears below). Schedule of courses available to BS-CSE majors during:
   • Winter 2005;
   • Spring 2005;
   • Summer 2005;
   • Autumn 2005;
   • Complete schedules of courses offered by the university.

4. Information on transfer credits etc.: Two pages accessible from the BS-CSE on-line brochure page provide information concerning this. The first is intended for students pursuing other majors in OSU/or students from outside OSU considering transferring to the BS-CSE program; this page provides information about the steps involved in such a transfer. The second provides information about receiving transfer credit for CSE courses on the basis of courses taken elsewhere. (The next item also addresses this.)

5. On-line information provided by OSU: This is a collection of links of considerable use to the student. Particularly interesting is the Buckeye Link. The "grades and advising" section of this page allows the student to view (in the "advising report") grades in all courses he or she has taken at OSU (see sample (pdf)); go through a "degree audit" (in the "degree audit report" section) that tells him or her what courses still need to be completed in order to finish the degree (sample (pdf)); and the "course applicability system", a state-wide system system, created as an Ohio Board of Regents intiative, to simplify the process of getting transfer credits.

6. Engineering Career Services (ECS): ECS provides a range of services to help students in finding both opportunities for co-ops and internships as well as full-time employment following graduation. They also offer workshops that provide students useful interviewing tips; occasionally, we arrange one of these workshops to be taught as part of a capstone or other higher-level class.

7. Some important programs/support services:
   • Math/Statistics learning center.
   • Technical Communication Resource Center.
   • Departmental computing facilities (see also systems operations support center).
   • University computing facilities.
   • Engineering honors program; University honors program.
   • CSE Diversity program; Women in Eng.; Minority Eng. prog.; Univ. Office of Minority Affairs; Univ. Off. of Disability Serv.

2. Program Objectives:

1. Published Program Objectives; this page is part of the on-line program brochure; the revisions that the objectives have gone through over the years as well as the processes used in arriving at these revisions are also briefly described in pages linked to from this page. The objectives are also published on the College of Engineering's web site.

2. Processes for determinining, evaluating, and improving objectives.

3. Program Outcomes, Assessment, and Feedback:

1. Program Outcomes: For each program objective, a specific set of outcomes has been designed such that if a student achieves the particular set of outcomes then he or she will be well prepared to accomplish the corresponding objectives in the years following graduation.

2. Relation of curriculum to program outcomes and to EC 2000 Criterion 3 outcomes

3. Summary of assessment mechanisms used, processes, and program improvements: This summarizes the various assessment mechanisms we use, as well as the feedback processes we use to arrive at program improvements based on the results of the assessments, and lists a number of program improvements.

4. Data from individual assessment tools:
   • Exit Survey results (annual)    (combined)
   • Alumni (Employee) survey results. (Please note that the College of Engineering, after discussions in the Outcomes Committee during Autumn '04, decided to switch to a two-year cycle for this survey as well as the Manager/Supervisor survey. Hence no results are available for the '04-'05 year; the next results will be for the '05-'06 year which will be available by mid-Spring of '06.)
   • Manager/Supervisor survey results
   • On-Campus Recruiter survey results: This has been discontinued since we were getting poor return rates for the survey; we are in the process of setting up a new mechanism that would survey supervisors of current students who are involved in co-op and internship programs.
   • Survey of computing professionals: This survey instrument was created as a possible way to obtain feedback from members of our Industrial Advisory Board. After discussions within the department, it was decided not to implement this survey since it was felt that better feedback would be obtained in a face-to-face meeting with members of the board on an annual or bi-annual basis.
   • Co-op/Internship survey: This is the proposed new survey of students involved co-ops and internships. As noted in the self-study (bottom of page 31), this survey will be used starting later this year. The first page of the survey concerns work habits etc. of the student in question; the second page asks the respondent to rate the student with respect to each of the EC Criterion 3 outcomes.

5. Feedback and program improvements:
   • Undergraduate Forums
   • Other feedback (from students, alumni, industrial advisory board, etc.)
   • Course Group Reports: As detailed in the "summary" page (item 3.c) above and in the self-study document, the CGR is the key feedback mechanism that we use to assess groups of related courses, identify improvements in the curriculum, and document and provide detailed rationale for changes in particular courses. Detailed description of the mechanism as well as all the reports are accessible from this page.

6. Quantitative versus qualitative assessments

4. Curriculum:

1. Materials from CSE courses: Materials from all the required CSE courses, all the CSE capstone design courses, all the common CSE elective courses, and the two discrete math courses will be available in hard-copy in DL 298.

2. Materials from non-CSE courses: Materials from the required calculus courses, the physics courses, etc. that are common to all engineering programs will be available in hard-copy in DL 263. Also in DL 263 will be materials -but not samples of student work; sorry!- from the required Intro to Engineering 181, 183 sequence. Also, on Sunday afternoon, the team will be able to visit Hitchcock Hall 214/216, the main lab space used for Engineering 181/183, to get a better feel for these courses.

3. Web sites of some required courses: Here are links to web sites of some of the key lower-level and mid-level courses. Most instructors of these classes either use these sites or tailor them slightly for their particular sections.
   • Common page for CSE 221, 222, 321;
         CSE 221;
         CSE 222;
         CSE 321.
   • CSE 360.
   • CSE 560 page; the resources section maybe of particular interest.
   • CSE 601.
   • Engineering 181, 183 (this page provides some basic information about the courses);
     Student Lab Packet for Engineering 181, 183.
     First year engineering honors program (engineering honors students take the courses described here in place of 181, 183).

4. Some capstone course projects: Here are a few student projects that are probably best seen on-line; these are from CSE 682, the capstone course on Computer Animation, CSE 758, the capstone course on Software Engineering, and CSE 772, the capstone course on Information Systems. Complete materials from these three courses (as well as the other capstone courses) will be available in hard-copy during the site visit).
   • The Worm (CSE 682 project);
   • Carousel (Mpeg video of the animation) (CSE 682 project);
   • FINA (Fast Index News Archive) (CSE 772 project).
   • Blue Elephant (CSE 758 project).

5. Oral communication skills.

Most of the faculty are also very involved in various instructional and other activities related to both the graduate and undergraduate programs in the department. Most of these activities are not documented in on-line pages, but some information is available in the Curriculum Committee pages and in the Undergraduate Studies Committee pages.

6. Computing Facilities: The department provides extensive computing facilities for the students and faculty in the department. Complete information is available on-line.

At the university level, the Office of Information Technology is responsible for support for university-wide computing, including support for on-line facilities in classrooms. Links to many of the university-level computing services of interest to students are collected together under the "Computing" section of the university's "current students" page.

7. Institutional Facilities (Classrooms and Libraries):

1. Classroom on-line services.
2. Libraries:
   • Science and Engineering Library (SEL) home page;
   • SEL's Computer Science page;
   • University Libraries;
   • Interlibrary loans.