url of this page: 
http://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/someKeyPointsForFaculty.txt

The main page for information about the ABET evaluation is:
http://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/

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 with the updates appearing
in reverse chronological order. 

(March 6, 2016; edited, 6/2/'16):

The evaluation will include a *site visit* which will be some time
during fall '17. But starting now and through all of '16-'17, we will
have to go through fairly intensive preparations. There are three
major tasks:

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:
"Program outcomes" (aka "student outcomes" (SOs)) is a set of items,
essentially specified by ABET, of "knowledge and skills" that students
of the program are expected to attain by the time of their graduation.
See the main page for the actual outcomes. The outcomes tend to be
very broad statements (such as "an ability to analyze a problem, and
identify and define the computing requirements appropriate to its
solution") rather than being related to specific technical concepts;
but the listed outcomes are the ones we are required to have.

"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. 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.