Spring: | May 23; May 9; Apr. 18; Apr. 4; |
Winter: | Mar. 7; Feb. 21; Feb. 14; Feb. 7; Jan. 31; Jan. 24; Jan. 10; |
Autumn: | November 30; November 23; November 16; November 2; October 26; October 12; September 28. |
Topic | Details/Actions | Status/plans |
---|---|---|
Preparation for accreditation evaluation | Details: These preparations are in full swing. The site-visit is scheduled for Oct. 30, 31, Nov. 1. Neelam provided some details of the preparations at the meeting of 9/28. There will be a detailed discussion about the preparations at the faculty meeting of 10/17. | On-going. |
Advising workshop for faculty | 9/28: For the last several years, we have organized a workshop for new and recent faculty to help them understand the structure and organization of our undergraduate programs and bring them up to speed on serving as faculty advisors for our majors. The workshop for this year will be organized most likely during the week of Oct. 10. | 9/28: Neelam will work with Peg on organizing the workshop. 10/12: This is now scheduled for Oct. 13 at 2:00 pm in DL 480. |
Interviewing Workshops | 9/28: Last spring, Rosemary Hill of Engineering Career Services offered a "workshop" during a class session of CSE 758 (for details, see the minutes of May 13). The workshop was based on the standard "interviewing workshops" that ECS conducts regularly. The session seems to have been quite useful to the students who attended it. We will try to arrange a similar session to be offered in an appropriate class (CSE 757 and 758 were suggested, during the UGSC meeting of 9/28, as possibilities). | No action so far. |
Evaluation of capstone courses | Background: Following the revision, more than a year ago, of our criteria for capstone courses, we had asked the faculty invovled with the individual courses to give us a presentation evaluating how well each course meets the new criteria. | This is complete. Details of the individual evaluations are available. |
Papers in 222/321 and later courses on important/controversial ideas/questions | Tim had planned to try this in the Summer but couldn't because of the shorter term. He plans to try it this fall, and has promised to tell us about this soon. | |
Recruiter surveys? Surveys of prospective students/parents? | None. | Not yet considered. |
Developing a common (one week?) "module" for all capstone courses; this will deal with project management, team working, and oral communication related topics. | Background: During the evaluations of some of the capstone courses, the idea was suggested that there are some items such as project management, team working, and oral communication, that are common to all the capstone courses. Students should have developed essential skills related to these items (especially team working and oral communication) earlier in the curriculum but it would seem useful to reiterate them at the start of each of the capstone courses. During informal email discussions (between Bruce, Rajiv, Raghu, and Neelam (in May '05)), the idea was proposed that perhaps a week-long "module" that does this could be developed and one or two people could be responsible for teaching this module at the start of each of the capstone courses. While this seems like a good idea, it has involved implications with respect to teaching credits etc. so implementation details would have to be worked out carefully. | Given the implications it has on teaching loads, we will wait until Dr. Zhang takes over as chair. |
Math 566/CSE 680 coordination | Background: Following the recent revisions in the CIS program, Math 566 is required for all CIS majors who entered OSU in Au '04 or later. This will allow us to update CSE 680 to include more in-depth discussions of some of the topics included in Math 566. David Mathias and Rafe Wenger have been working with Tim Carlson of the math department on coordinating the two courses. | David will keep us updated about this. |
Changes in Engineering GEC | Details: The College of Engineering has proposed revising the GEC program required of all engineering students. The net effect of the proposal would be that the number of GEC hours for engineering students would go down from 38 to 35. For CSE majors, however, the accreditation requirements dictate a minimum of 45 hours. If the college proposal is approved (by the CAA), we will specify the additional 10 hours of GEC required of CSE majors to consist of Comm 321 and one of the five courses in the business minor. | Still pending at CAA; but it looks like much of the college's proposal will be rejected by CAA. The one exception might be the approval of a required Ethics course (which will be allowed to be double-counted in one of the other categories so there is no increase in the number of GEC hours). |
Allow a minor to count as the "related work" section of the BA degree? | Background: The BA-CIS program includes a "related work"
portion that requires students to take 15 hours of courses in a
related field and 8 hours of courses in the related field, CSE, or math.
It would seem reasonable to allow students to substitute a
suitable minor (similar to what we now allow in the individualized
option of the BS-CIS program) for this section. (This was a suggestion from Dean John Wanzer (when we discussed the proposal to include a minor as part of the individualized option for the BS-CIS program (May '05).) |
No action yet. |
Change name of the CIS program to CS program | Background/proposal: CIS students have occasionally
reported that recruiters confuse them with MIS students.
It would therefore seem to make sense to change the name of the program
to Computer Science. Inclusion of the word "information" no longer
makes very much sense since the word is no longer part of the department
name.
There seems to be general consensus on this, but we will wait until the new chair is in place before pursuing this. In any case, such a name would have to be approved by several levels of the university. |
Wait until Dr. Zhang takes over as chair next January before deciding on how (and whether) to proceed on this. |
One other item that Rajiv noted was that it might be useful to consider refining one of our current rubrics, the one related to team working. Specifically, it may be appropriate to add dimensions to that rubric that concern such skills as interacting effectively with a project sponsor. Although this is not specifically related to team working, it is clearly an important skill and one that the capstone courses ought to focus on. We will consider how best this issue may be addressed.
The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.
At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Eitan, Neelam, Peg, Raghu, Rajiv.
Next meeting: to be announced.
It was noted that it may make sense to change the name of the BS program to BS-CS and keep the name of the BA program unchanged. This would ensure that we (as a dept.) have some claim on the term "information" and the associated areas. This would be defensible given the curriculum for the BA program, since the only high-level required CS course in the program is CSE 670, Introduction to database systems.
On a more general note, the committee felt that the BA program could be of interest to many students who want to have a reasonable background in CS but are primarily interested in applications of computing to other fields, especially in the humanitites and social sciences; some possible courses for the BA program might be CSE 551, 581, 601, 616, 630, 671, 677(?), 679(?), 682(?), perhaps some of the business courses, JCom 321, maybe some art courses (such as Art 350, 451, 452, 550, 551, 552, 553). David Mathias volunteered to look into this; a subcommittee consisting of David, Tim Long and Dong Xuan will consider this and report back to the full committee.
The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.
At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Peg, Raghu.
Next meeting: to be announced.
Second, this test included a question that probed students' understanding of basic digital encoding of information. The performance of students (22 out of 38 students got the correct answer) was not quite as good as we would have expected, given how simple the question was. We need to consider this further; perhaps it would be useful to share this information with the math faculty involved with Math 366 and 566.
Third, there was some concern that the questions on the test were not quite as well designed as they could be. Specifically, for several questions, depending on how a student interpreted the question, different answers could plausibly be regarded as "correct". Given that this is a multiple-choice test, it is important to try to eliminate this type of ambiguity in questions.
Fourth, it was suggested that it would be useful to have summarize the results in a somewhat different manner, providing information about the number of students who picked each of the possible answers for each of the questions. This information is available in the current summary but it is not explicit. At the same time, it is also necessary to continue to have the current form of the summary since it provides useful information to interested students about their individual performance on the test. Neelam will look into this, and also into the possibility of automating the production of the summary results.
Overall, the conclusion was that the first three offerings of the POCAT have been useful and that we should continue to use it.
One potential problem with doing this would be that other units in the university might interpret this to mean that we, as a dept., no longer have an interest in the area that might be called "informatics" and the areas. Since it was already nearing 11:30, it was decided that we will continue the discussion of this point and the general question in the next meeting.
The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.
At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Peg, Raghu.
Next meeting: to be announced.
The EAC draft statement was expected several weeks ago; but there is still no sign of it and no indication when it will arrive.
The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.
At the meeting: Daniel, David, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Peg, Raghu;
Next meeting: to be announced.
The full results of the evaluation are available on-line. Students seem to have done satisfactorily along most of the dimensions. The one problem area seems to be understanding of economic factors. It was noted that this area should see improvement in the coming years since we have recently instituted a requirement that all BS-CSE students should take either Econ 200 or Econ 201 as part of their GEC courses. Overall, the activity seems to be serving its intended purpose and the rubric seems effective in evaluating the degree of achievement of these particular outcomes ((h), (j), and (g)). CSE 601 is also offered in the Spring quarter; we will try to schedule a discussion of the results from that offering in late Spring quarter.
(Note: Off-line discussions after the meeting suggested that it might be a good idea to evaluate these student papers along another dimension, i.e., ethical and professional issues. This would be logical since the course is intended to include discussion of these issues.)
The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.
At the meeting: Bruce, David, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Paolo, Peg; Bob Mathis.
Next meeting: to be announced.
The first courses to include this activity are CSE 682 (Computer Animation) and 772(Information Systems Project) offered this quarter and taught by Rick Parent and Hakan Ferhatosmanoglu respectively. In 772, Hakan combined this activity with the planning phase of the design project of the course. The task that students were assigned to perform was to prepare an individual project plan that, in addition to the standard requirements for project plans, also required:
A discussion of the potential tools, algorithms, and approaches that could be used to accomplish your responsibilities. These could include design environments, database management systems, algorithms to handle technical issues; essentially any tool that requires you to make a design decision. Provide information about each of the options. Compare the options to each other and name the option you plan to use and the reasons for using that option. If it is unwise to make a firm selection at this point, list the most likely candidates and the factors that you will use in making a selection.This essentially required students to research various tools, discover what their strengths and weaknesses were, and report their findings as part of their "project plan document", thereby ensuring that students' lifelong learning skills as well as written communication skills were developed. The plans submitted by the students were evaluated using the rubric at the url cited above.
Most of the students in the class seem to have taken the assignment seriously and scored well (3 or 4 on the scales specified in the rubric) in all four dimensions: research, analysis, organization (of paper), and style.
In CSE 682, Rick similarly required the students to evaluate various tools and techniques to accomplish a specified task, for example, generating the visual effect of a fire. Students were required to research such approaches as 2 1/2D animation, animated textures, or a full CFD implementation, and evaluate the quality of the resulting visuals and the effort required in each case to meet the needs. They were then asked to write a paper presenting their findings. These papers were evaluated, again using the same rubric. In this paper too, students performed reasonably well although the scores on the research dimension as well as the analysis dimension were somewhat lower than in the case of 772 (average of about 2.5 and 2 respectively). This may have been because students may have been more focused on activities more directly related to their design project and not spent as much time and effort on exploring the general context and applicability of the tools and techniques. Rick also seemed to feel that having the paper due early in the quarter when students are gearing up to get started on their design project hurts. As an aside, the reason for doing that this quarter was that we were expecting to have to respond by mid-February to the EAC draft statement; but there is no sign of the EAC statement yet, so this could have been scheduled for later in the quarter although obviously we didn't know that at the start of the quarter. In any case, it is expected that, the experience of this quarter, and the flexibility of having the paper due at a much later point in the quarter, will ensure that students will perform better on these dimensions in future offerings of the course.
Oral communication skills: Hakan also presented his evaluations of some initial oral presentations using the rubric at: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/DIRASSMNT/oralPresRubric.html. The rubric has four dimensions, respectively organization, mechanics, delivery, and relating audience. Hakan added a fifth dimension, technical content. Presentations were evaluated both by all members of the audience. For any given presentation, the evaluations by different evaluators generally produced consistent results. [It should also be noted that this rubric was designed without taking account of the fact that many presentations in capstone courses tend to be team presentations. A new rubric has now been developed for evaluating team presentations and is available at: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/DIRASSMNT/oralTeamPresRubric.html].
As may be expected, there was some variation in the scores across different presentations. It is clearly too early to consider any changes that may be implemented in order to improve students' oral communication skills. We should also note that we already have implemented an importance change, the requirement of Comm 321, the 5-credit course on public speaking, as part of the BS-CSE general education courses. But this change has just gone into effect so most students currently in the capstone courses will not have taken the course. One possible course of action for the next two or three years might be to compare the oral communication scores of students who have not taken Comm 321 with those of students who have. Another might be to share our results with the Communication faculty most involved with Comm 321. We will explore these possibilities.
The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.
At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Paolo, Raghu; Hakan Ferhatosmanoglu, Rick Parent.
Next meeting: to be announced.
NMRs (Non-major requirements) for BA students under McHale:
The report also specifies the same reductions/exemptions as for the BS programs.
Impact on BA-CIS: The current requirements of the BA-CIS program are:
Impact: None on (1) or (2); could reduce (3) by 5 hrs; none on (4); could reduce (5) by 5 hrs; reduce (6) by 5 hrs; (7) depends on the college; it is not clear where (8) came from originally; there is no mention of it in McHale.
NET: Could reduce GEC by 15 hrs; might be possible to reduce an additional (5) hrs in (8). But the program is already at 191 hrs. So we will probably only reduce (5) and (6) by 5 hrs each bringing the program to 181 hrs.
Han-Wei noted that there were serious reservations in the MPS
Curriculum Comm. about the McHale proposal since it may have fairly
serious negative consequences for some of the departments (Math,
Physics, etc.) if various programs "took advantage" of the proposal to
substantially reduce requirements in these areas. So in our report to the
MPS CC, we may want to note that, if the McHale proposal goes into effect,
we will probably reduce the GEC component of both the BA-CIS and BS-CIS programs by 10 hrs (in each case reducing Arts & hum. by 5 hrs and Social Sc. by 5 hrs); the resulting programs will be 181 hrs. each; but we will
also note that if other programs were to reduce their GECs by a greater
amount, then we will probably reconsider our plans.
(Note: There are a couple of faculty/staff forums on the McHale report being held in the next couple of weeks:
Thursday, Feb. 16, 8:00-9:30, Smith Seminar Room, Physics Research Bldg.;
Thursday, Feb. 23, 4:00-5:30, Wexner Center Film/Theatre Room.
People interested in offering their comments on the McHale proposal
should try to attend one of these.)
The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.
At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Peg, Paolo, Raghu, Han-Wei.
Next meeting: to be announced.
There was also agreement that the program objectives should be simplified as discussed at the meeting of Jan. 24; i.e., replace the current set of five objectives by the following:
Neelam pointed out the EAC requirement that objectives be established based on input from important constituents including alumni. We will therefore try to get feedback from alumni via the alumni survey which is scheduled to be sent out soon before presenting the revised objectives to the faculty for discussion and approval. The revised objectives will also be presented at the Undergraduate Forum for feedback from current students.
There are two versions of the "Non-Major Requirements (NMR)" under the McHale proposals, one "with Cluster" and the other without. Since it is not clear when clusters will be developed nor how many students are likely to take them, here we only consider NMRs without clusters.
NMRs for BS students under McHale:
The report also specifies the following reductions/exemptions:
Impact on BS-CIS: The current requirements of the BS-CIS program are:
Impact: None on (1) or (2); could reduce (3) by 5 hrs (out of the "plus 15 hrs", but must require biol. sc. and lab course.); none on (4); reduce (5) by 5 hrs; reduce (6) by 5 hrs; (7)-no change?
NET: Reduce GEC by 15 hrs but give up drop-a-GEC for a net reduction of 10 hrs.
Impact on BS-CSE: The current requirements of the BS-CSE program are:
NET: The only impact seems to be on (3): we may, depending on
how the McHale requirement is interpreted, have to require
students to take a biological sciences course.
What about:
"b. One "breadth" course (categories (3) through (6)) can be
substituted by any of the following: an upper level course in
another breadth area that the student has already fulfilled"?
On the basis of this, can't 5 of the extra hours in (3) be used
against one of (4), (5), or (6)? This may apply to OTHER engineering
programs, but not to BS-CSE since we have the CAC requirement of 45
hours of general education (which consists of courses in categories
(1), (4), (5), (6), (7)).
The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.
At the meeting: Bruce, Peg, Paolo, Raghu, Daniel, David, Eric, Eitan, Neelam.
Next meeting: to be announced.
With respect to the objectives, there are no particular EAC-specified objectives that have to be included among (or be implied by) our objectives. Neelam proposed that we replace our current objectives with the following simplified set:
Note that EAC does require the program objectives to be determined "based on the needs of the program's various constituencies"; and this has been interpreted to mean we have to get input from such groups as alums, industrial advisory board, etc. in determining the objectives.
There was general consensus that these changes would be appropriate. One suggestion that was made was that while it might be appropriate to revise the objectives and especially the outcomes given the ABET requirements, it might also be reasonable to retain our current set of objectives and outcomes and rename them to something along those lines of, "our philosophy". We will continue this discussion in a future meeting before deciding what to recommend to the faculty.
The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.
At the meeting: Bruce, Peg, Paolo, Raghu, Daniel, David, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam.
Next meeting: to be announced.
CSE 682 and 772, the two capstone courses offered this quarter, will each require students to write a paper that will develop their lifelong learning skills as well as their communication skills. The papers will be evaluated using an appropriate rubric we recently developed. Both courses will report the results to UGSC by late January. This quarter's offering of CSE 601 will require students to write a paper that will require students to explore social and/or ethical and/or professional issues related to some recent technology or development. This paper will be evaluated using another rubric we recently developed. The results will again be reported to UGSC by late January. Both sets of results will be discussed in a UGSC meeting in early February.
The exit test will be offered this quarter on January 17. The results will be discussed at the Jan. 24 meeting of UGSC. Another activity this quarter will be the annual forum. Plans for this will be discussed soon.
The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.
At the meeting: Peg, Paolo, Raghu, David, Rajiv, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam.
Next meeting: Jan. 24.
With respect to the multiple-choice test, we decided that it will be offered once a quarter. It will be held on a week night early in the quarter. BS-CSE majors, when they apply for graduation, will be asked to sign up for one of the upcoming tests.
With respect to the assessment of soft skills in the capstone courses, we will develop a set of rubrics that will be used by all capstone course instructors. The performance of the students along the metrics in the rubrics will be provided to UGSC by the course instructors for discussion and possible further action if necessary.
With respect to the outcomes related to contemporary issues and global impact of engineering solutions, we decided that CSE 601 would provide the most reasonable opportunity for assessing them. Neelam will talk to Bob Mathis (who has taught all the recent sections of the course and is scheduled to teach it in Winter '06) about how this may be done. One possibility is to require students to write a paper on a topic that would involve these issues and evaluate the papers using a rubric that would includes the appropriate metrics.
Neelam will create a set of web pages that will serve to document this new set of direct assessment mechanisms and will also be used to document the results of the assessments and any program improvements based on these results.
The meeting adjourned at 3:35 pm.
Next meeting: Winter quarter.
More details on this: For oral communications and team-working, the capstone courses will evaluate student abilities using appropriate rubrics (see, for example, http://www.ncsu.edu/midlink/rub.pres.html, and http://edweb.sdsu.edu/triton/tidepoolunit/Rubrics/collrubric.html; see also http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/rubrics.shtml for a variety of rubrics). These evaluations will be made available to UGSC so the committee can discuss and compare the results across the various capstone courses and suggest possible improvements in the individual courses.
For the outcomes related to lifelong learning and written communication, the plan is that each capstone course will require each student (individually, not as a team) in the course to write a short paper on some new tool, technology, standard, or process they had to research during the course. This may be something that was done as part of the design/implementation project or it may be independent of the project. The paper will not only describe the tool etc., but also explain the particular problem the student was trying to solve or task he or she wanted the tool to perform, how the student decided to research the particular tool, how it compares with alternatives, etc. The paper will be evaluated using a common rubric and will evaluate students' abilities both with respect to written communication as well as with respect lifelong learning. The papers (or some samples thereof) will also be evaluated by UGSC again with the goal of evaluating achievement of these outcomes as well as suggest possible improvements.
The test questions will be developed by instructors involved in those courses, possibly in consultation with instructors of prerequisite courses. The results will be discussed in UGSC once a year and any apparent problems will be brought to the attention of the faculty in the relevant area for further analysis and possible actions. The mechanics of how the test should be administered is not yet clear. One possibility is that they will be administered as part of each capstone course, requiring that each of these courses sacrifice one class period for this purpose. Another is to have a "program outcomes assessment night" once a quarter during which students will take the test.
In the second approach, individual instructors of selected courses would be expected to play a key role in the assessment. First, they would map (using the syllabus database) specific learning outcomes of their respective courses to specific program outcomes. Second, they would match specific final exam questions of their course with specific learning outcomes of the course. Third, they would enter the grades that students in the course receive on each of these questions into the system (the syllabus database). In a simplified version of this approach, the second and third steps would be combined into one in which the instructor would simply provide his or her assessment of the degree to which each student achieved each learning outcome of the course. The degree of student achievement of learning outcomes of the various courses combined with the mappings of these outcomes to the program outcomes would be the basis of discussion (in UGSC) to identify possible problems and potential solutions.
Some advantages of the first approach are that the assessment and evaluation mechanism would be very well documented and clear, it would allow for comparison across different sections of the courses in question, and it would assess the degree of achievement of the program outcomes near the time of graduation. Some advantages of the second approach are that it would be non-threatening to students, would require no time or effort on their part, and that there is no danger that there would be any mismatch between the final exam questions and the class discussion.
After an extended discussion, and taking account of the email discussion over the last several days, the general consensus was that we should recommend to the faculty that the first approach be adopted at least for now. Assuming the faculty does approve, students in Rajiv's section of 758 have agreed to take such a multiple choice exam (probably on their last day of classes); Saday may also be able to have his 778 students take the exam. This will give us some initial ideas on how the test can be improved and we will use those ideas early next quarter to tweak the test as needed. This was one of the points made in the committee discussion, that we should look for ways to improve the validity of the test results as well as to make it as palatable to students as possible. Indeed, some interesting ideas for improvement already came up at this meeting:
There was a question whether the test should be anonymous. The consensus here was that since having student names associated with the individual tests would allow us to perform important statistical analysis (such as those based on which section of a given course a given student attended, how long ago the student took the course, etc.) that we would not be able to do in the absence of this information, for now we should not go to anonymous tests. If a reasonable number of students seem to prefer anonymous tests, we can consider that after a quarter or two. Another question was whether students should have the option of knowing their scores in the test. The consesus seemed to be that they should, but it was not clear how easy or difficult this should be. Another suggestion was that questions could be included on the test asking for ideas on how to improve the test both from the point of view of its purpose of assessing achievement of program outcomes and from the point of view of making it more acceptable to students.
At the faculty meeting of 11/28, we will recommend that the approach using the test for assessing outcomes in the second group and the approach using the capstone course activities as described above for the first group of outcomes be adopted. Further, to the extent possible, we will try these out this quarter, and carry out a more complete piloting/implementation in the Winter quarter.
At the meeting: Daniel, Eric, Neelam, Paolo, Raghu, Rick (Parent).
The meeting adjourned at 3:35 pm.
Next meeting: Nov. ??
This discussion will be continued in the next meeting on Nov. 23.
At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eitan, Eric, Matt, Neelam, Paolo, Peg, Raghu, Shawn, Tim.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: Nov. 23.
Required courses: CSE 551, 677, 678, 694K;After some further discussion, the proposal was approved unanimously. It will be recommended to the faculty for its consideration and approval at its meeting of Nov. 7.
Additional required course for BS-CSE students: one of Math 568, 571, 647, 648;
Additional required course for BS-CIS students: CSE 601;
Elective courses: 12 hours;
At least 3 hours must be CSE courses (as specified for the other options);
the following non-CSE courses may be of special interest:
AMIS 531, 627, 653, 658, 659; CRP/GEOG 607.
One question that came up during the discussion was why such an option was needed, given that students interested in taking courses that fit in the option as described above, could do so under the existing Individualized Option. The main reason is to provide support for the proposal for creating a Center devoted to this topic; one of the important reasons that last year's proposal for the Center did not succeed was that we did not have such an option.
On a related point, it was noted that any individual faculty member or group of faculty who have specific ideas for a new option should make up a one-page description of this as a "track" that students might follow under the Individualized Option. This would be available in the Advising Office for any interested students. Essentially, the description should list the courses in the track (making sure that the set of courses listed satisfy all the requirements of the Individualized Option), and provide a brief explanation of why a student might want to follow the track, and possibly provide e-mail contact information of the appropriate faculty. We could also put the information about these tracks on the Undergrad Programs' web site. If, over a period of some time, the track proves reasonably popular, we can then consider making it a named option. This was indeed one of the main ideas behind the Individualized Option.
The Program Audit Forms (PAFs) which are the only
written reports
that the team leaves behind at the end of a visit, reported the
following findings.
(Note that the PAFs were not available to us at
the time of the UGSC meeting on 11/2. Hence the UGSC discussion was based
on what we had heard at the debriefings and at the Exit Interview.
This was generally consistent with what was on the PAFs although there
seems to have been some confusion about what the CAC team was reporting
versus what the EAC evaluator was reporting.)
The "Comments" below are
based on the UGSC discussion. For convenience, the relevant portions of the
various criteria are also reproduced below.
Guidance on program requirements is provided by a professional advising staff. This information is posted on the Department website. Students also have access to DARS, the degree audit system used by the University. In addition to the professional advising staff, students are assigned a faculty advisor to advise on curricular and career matters.Here is the criterion requirement on this:Students report some dissatisfaction with this arrangement; some commented that students not seeking faculty advisors' advice because the faculty advisors' interests did not seem to mesh with the student's interest. Criterion 1 requires consideration of students' effective career advising for a program to meet its educational objectives. It is suggested that the program assign students to faculty advisors based on mutual interest.
[T]he institution must evaluate student performance, advise students regarding curricular and career matters ...[Comments: We work closely with the Engineering Career Services office in the College and ECS provides advice to students about career matters; it also provides considerable help to students in finding internships as well as (post-graduation) full-time jobs.
This criterion requires that program outcomes are being measured with the indicated degree to which the outcomes are achieved is indicated. The program is to be complimented on the actions taken to collect outcome data on the program. However, all of the direct assessment instruments produce data of a qualitative nature. Little or no quantitative direct performance indicators are produced. Although the qualitative data can be used to produce useful information for program improvement, it is insufficient for proper assessment. Quantitative outcome data must also be collected on the performance of the students and alumni.The criterion requirements on this are as follows:This criterion also requires that an assessment process with documented results to measure outcomes be in place. While documentation exists for what multiple assessment methods being used to assess the various outcomes, documentation of how the process is being sustained is not well compiled. It is suggested that the program provide a schematic drawing of the assessment process with a timeline that reflects systematic processes.
[Note: Presumably, the first para is about the Weakness and the second is about the Concern.]
[T]here must be ... an assessment process, with documented results, that demonstrates that the program outcomes are being measured and indicates the degree to which the outcomes are achieved. There must be evidence that the results of this assessment process are applied to the further development of the program.[Comments: The point about "direct assessment" seems to have come from a "white paper" put out by ABET rather than from the criterion requirements. Moreover, the self-study did highlight one direct assessment mechanism we use, i.e., student performance in individual courses. Further, the self-study provided the detailed documentation about the assessment and feedback processes, the timeline for the processes, etc. Our web pages (the urls for which were included in the self-study and also communicated by e-mail to the team) cleanly summarize assessment data gathered over several years, and also include the long list of program improvements resulting from these activities.]
Program has an assessment process which relies on course outcomes, through the Group Course Review. However: 1) quantitative course data is not collected in a timely fashion; 2) mapping from course outcomes to program outcomes is not specific; 3) the assessment timeline is unclear, and there is no evidence that all courses are reviewed periodically.Standards I-3, I-4, I-5 read as follows:
I-3. Data relative to the objectives must be routinely collected and documented, and used in program assessments.[Comments: As detailed in the self-study, we use a number of assessment mechanisms: Exit Surveys, Alumni Surveys, Performance of students in individual courses, Supervisor Surveys, and the Undergraduate Forum. The CGR and other evaluation mechanisms (discussions in UGSC about the survey results, evaluation of capstone courses in UGSC etc.) analyze the data from these mechanisms to arrive at program improvements. The issue about "quantitative course data is not collected in a timely fashion" as well as "there is no evidence that all courses are reviewed periodically" seem to have come from the fact that one --out of a total of ten-- CGRs has not been updated in a timely manner. The issue about "mapping from course outcomes to program outcomes is not specific" is puzzling since there are specific tables in the self-study (and on our web site) that do just that. Perhaps most discouraging, both the EAC and the CAC evaluators seem to have ignored the long, sustained, and documented record of program improvements that we have achieved based on our assesment results. If program improvement is the purpose of assessment --as it ought to be-- our record shows that we have extremely effective assessment and evaluation mechanisms.]
I-4. The extent to which each program objective is being met must be periodically assessed.
I-5. The results of the program's periodic assessments must be used to help identify opportunities for program improvement.
We are allowed to submit a "14-day response" to the team's findings. The response is supposed to only address "factual errors". We plan to submit these responses (one to EAC, the other to CAC).
At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eitan, Eric, Matt, Neelam, Paolo, Peg, Shawn, Tim.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: ??
The committee generally liked the idea but suggested that it might be good to allow students a bit more flexibility in the required courses; i.e., instead of specifying particular courses for all four of the required courses, specifying only two or three particular courses as required and allowing students to choose the remaining one or two from a somewhat longer list of courses. And, for the remaining 12 hours, not explicitly listing any CSE courses as "recommended" since, after extensive discussions last year, we decided to get rid of such recommended lists of CSE courses. The committee suggested that CSE 601 be included among the required courses for the BS-CIS option. And, finally, that there was no strong reason to list the Perl course as the recommended 459 course for the option.
We will continue this discussion at the meeting of Nov. 2; we hope to have a proposal for such an option for faculty consideration at the faculty meeting of Nov. 7.
It was also suggested that outside people (i.e., non-students) may be interested in taking these courses if we can give them some kind of certificate saying that they have completed a program in Information/ Computation Assurance or something along those lines.
At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eitan, Eric, Matt, Neelam, Paolo, Peg, Shawn, Tim.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: 11/2.
Each program has been asked to invite two of their alums or suitable industry reps (or one of each) to the lunch. Neelam, Peg, and Rajiv are working on this. Chairs of the various departments will also be at the lunch.
It turns out that we already have such a course, CSE 616. This course was approved as a service learning course some time ago, based on the fact that the student projects in the course typically come from non-profit organizations in the Columbus area. On the other hand, it is not clear how active the service learning program currently is. Their web pages don't seem to have been updated in about a year. Nevertheless, the consensus in the committee was that the concept of service learning courses is a useful one and that several of our courses (in addition to 616) might qualify. For example, some of the projects in CSE 758 have a strong service learning component. The one concern was that if a given course were designated as a service learning course, wouldn't that require every student in every section of the course to be involved in projects that qualify as "service learning projects"? And would this not create somewhat of a problem?
To address this concern, the following was proposed: create a 1-credit (or possibly 1-2 credit) course, similar to the current 693; a student in a given section of a course such as 758 who works on a project that includes a service learning component will have the option of doing additional work on the project in the following quarter where the focus will be on the service learning aspect; and if the student completes this work satisfactorily, he or she will receive an S grade for 1 (or 2) hours of 692; and this can be included as part of the student's tech elective hours. We will consider this issue again after checking with the Core Committee to make sure that this is acceptable.
Qtr Applications Accepted GPA 4-qtr Eng ASC Tot Eng ASC Tot Cut-off admits Au 05 4 5 9 3 3 6 2.3 143 Su 05 33 22 55 31 18 49 2.3 153 Sp 05 29 15 44 26 13 39 2.3 162 Wi 05 41 17 58 39 15 54 2.3 165 Au 04 14 4 18 13 3 16 2.3 158 Su 04 47 14 61 45 13 58 2.5 154 Sp 04 28 21 49 19 19 38 2.7 170 Wi 04 43 11 54 36 10 46 2.8 191 Au 03 10 5 15 8 4 12 2.8 197 Su 03 49 33 82 44 30 74 2.8 197 Sp 03 39 29 68 32 27 59 3.0 163 Wi 03 36 23 59 32 20 52 3.1 149 Au 02 8 6 14 8 4 12 3.2 155 Su 02 26 29 55 19 21 40 3.2 174 Sp 02 34 24 58 28 17 45 3.2 220 Wi 02 48 38 86 38 20 58 3.0 233 Au 01 21 12 33 20 10 30 3.0 229 Su 01 56 42 98 50 37 87 3.0 228 Sp 01 45 30 75 35 23 58 3.0 235 Wi 01 46 29 75 32 22 54 3.0 230 Au 00 12 25 37 8 22 30 3.0 235 Su 00 47 75 122 36 58 94 2.8 231 Sp 00 40 38 78 31 22 53 2.8 231 Wi 00 50 29 79 39 20 59 2.8 257 Au 99 10 17 27 10 16 26 2.8 272 Su 99 59 63 122 47 52 99 2.4 276 Sp 99 45 50 95 38 42 80 2.4 251 Wi 99 52 36 88 45 29 74 2.4 235 Au 98 17 19 36 13 17 30 2.4 252Although the numbers are rather discouraging and don't seem to show any signs of recovery, it was not clear what action, if any, we should take. One possibility would be to remove the current requirement of 2.3 for admission to the major (so any student who completes all the course requirements and is in good standing, i.e., has a GPA of 2.0 or above) would be eligible for admission to the major. We decided to postpone action on this until our new chair is in place early next quarter.
At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eitan, Eric, Matt, Neelam, Paolo, Peg, Raghu, Shawn, Tim.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: 10/26.
A discussion of the evaluation is planned for the faculty meeting of October 17.
At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eitan, Eric, Neelam, Paolo, Peg, Tim.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: 10/12.