Note: This page is a brief summary, mainly for CSE faculty, of some important points as we start getting ready for the upcoming ABET evaluation of the BS-CSE (only the BS-CSE) program. This page will be updated as we get closer to the evaluation.

Site visit

1. Self-study: We have to submit a detailed self-study about the program. The ABET *deadline* for the self-study is some time in June'17 although the college will expect it to be ready much before that time.
2. Assessment-related: One of the key things that ABET focuses on is "assessment" of how well the "program" achieves its "outcomes" and how the results of the assessment are used to effect "improvements" in the "program". [See below to see why some of these words are in quotes.] The details of our assessment processes along with examples/ summaries of assessment data, as well as of how we evaluated the assessment data to identify and effect program improvement, are critical. We have to include these details in the self-study and we can expect the site visit team to spend a lot of time probing this aspect of the program. The team will also expect our faculty to be very familiar with our assessment/improvement processes because this is supposed to be the responsibility of the entire faculty, not just one or two specific individuals.
3. Materials from courses: The other item that the visiting evaluation team will focus on is materials from individual courses. This includes such things as copies of syllabi, lecture slides, homework/project assignments, midterm and final exams, and, most importantly, copies of a range of student work (showing how they did on the exams as well as on the homeworks/projects). Also important will be evidence to show that assessment results are used to improve courses; but note that assessment does not mean things like student performance in exams; see below.

   If you are involved with any of the key undergrad courses (Software I, II; Foundations I, II; Systems I, II; junior project; core choice courses; capstone design courses; and the most popular elective courses), your help in collecting and organizing these materials will be essential.

Program outcomes, assessment, evaluation, continuous improvement

Assessment means assessment of the extent to which students in the program, on the average, achieve the SOs. It does NOT mean grades in courses or other things; to reiterate, the question is to what extent students in the program are achieving the SOs, not their grades and the like that we typically think of when we hear "assessment". Some programs take the following approach: map each outcome to specific topics in specific courses, treat student performance in questions related to those topics in, say, the final exams of those courses as a measure of the extent to which the particular outcome is achieved. But this would require inclusion of such questions in the final exam every time the course is offered and require faculty teaching those courses to report students' marks in those questions from those exams, etc. Such an approach is unsustainable in a large program such as ours. Hence we have, instead, chosen an approach based on POCAT as our main "direct" assessment mechanism. For details, see the main page.

Evaluation means analysis of the assessment results; i.e., try to explain any strange/unexpected results obtained in the assessments, especially to the extent that they indicate that students (on the average) may not be achieving specific knowledge/skill to the extent that we expected them to, relate them to specific aspects of particular courses (or, possibly, other parts of the BS-CSE program as a whole), and come up with ideas for changes that would mitigate the problem(s), and implement the changes; repeat.

That is what ABET requires with respect to student outcomes (SOs), assessment, evaluation, and continuous improvement. In our program, the evaluation of the POCAT tests (and of the other assessments) happens in the Undergraduate Studies Committee meetings and the results and ideas for possible improvements in the program to address any identified problems are documented as detailed in the main page.