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Learning and Teaching > Program Assessment > Process to achieve outcomes

Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering
Feb 11, 2005

Contact:
Steve Mickelson
103 Davidson Hall
estaben@iastate.edu
294-6524

i. Organization - how are departments organized for continuous assessment/improvement of learning?

The Ag Engineering Curriculum Committee leads the departmental effort for our continuous improvement effort. When appropriate, issues are taken to the entire faculty for discussion, review and vote. The Committee also provides feedback to individual faculty about their classes. Faculty members, as their schedules allow, meet weekly to discuss teaching and learning in the ABE Learning Circle.

ii. Objectives/Outcomes - What processes do you use to develop and review program objectives and program/course outcomes?

Attached is a map of our outcomes assessment/continuous improvement process. Every three years, we review our objectives and outcomes with our stakeholders as represented by our Advisory Committee.

iii. Assessment Measures - direct vs. indirect, qualitative vs. quantitative, what groups/constituencies, what rubrics

Direct Measures		Indirect Measures
Electronic portfolio assessment Evaluations of internships Evaluations of graduates in the workplace Fundamentals of Engineering exam results		Senior exit surveys Student evaluation of instruction 5-yr post graduate surveys External reviews Advisor evaluations Placement statistics Stakeholder discussions

 

Our direct measures (except the FE exam) use OPAL or OPAL-like assessments to evaluate actual student/graduate work in terms of the Key Actions for 15 competencies. Electronic portfolios (collections of student work organized around competencies) are evaluated in the senior year by two faculty and one external reviewer. We are just now implementing electronic portfolios. Supervisors of our students in engineering internships and co-op experiences evaluate our students. Supervisors of graduates, two years after graduation, are asked to evaluate our graduates.

iv. Continuous Improvement - What changes have been made in your program as result of your assessment feedback process?

Direct Measures

Competency assessments in internships and graduates in the workplace have identified innovation, communication, customer focus and cultural adaptability as weaknesses in our students. To address this, we have:

• integrated competency development and demonstration in freshman, sophomore and junior learning communities.
• increased the number of open-ended design problems, case studies, and communication assignments through the curriculum, with an emphasis on vertical integration.
• created a junior-level learning community link with English 314 (Technical Writing) immersing students into a virtual biotechnology company, with open-ended tasks and problem solving.
• linked freshmen engineering courses to first-year composition courses in the ABE Learning Community.
• integrated service learning into the ABE Learning Community.
• increased the number of international experiences available to our students.
• promoted faculty international experiences so that now 100% of our faculty have participated in such activities.

Results from the Fundamentals of Engineering exam indicated a need to strengthen ethics throughout the curriculum. We have included more activities relative to ethics and professionalism in our capstone design courses, senior seminar, and the English 314 link.

Indirect Measures

As a result of feedback from students, graduates, faculty, industry, our industrial advisory board, and external reviews, we:

• developed, and are working to implement, a curriculum for a bachelor of science in Biological Systems Engineering
• require AE 404 (Instrumentation and Controls) for all AE students, replacing EE 441.
• dropped AE 215 (Fundamentals of AE-I).
• changed AE 303 (Numerical Methods) to a sophomore level course (AE 203) to strengthen Visual
• Basic and problem solving skills, and the connection between Engr 160 and junior and senior AE courses.
• created AE 340 (Agricultural Field Machinery)
• hired new faculty in cutting-edge areas of teaching and research.
• improved our laboratory experiences in electronics, controls, fluid power, and diesel technology.
• mapped competencies to our AE specific student outcomes.
• offer student ProE training.
• require all students working in our shops to complete safety training.
• assess students on safety awareness

v. Documentation and Dissemination - This would be primarily the web record of our objectives, outcomes, processes, and results.

http://learn.ae.iastate.edu

vi. College role - What could the college do to help with portfolios, out-year assessments, data analysis and tools, etc.?

1. Assistance in compiling/analyzing OPAL data from internship evaluations. The data we receive now could be in a more useful format.
2. A database to track faculty activity, making it easier to create the ABET self-study documents.
3. Assistance in administering OPAL surveys to employers of graduates two years post-graduation.
4. Technical support and further software development for electronic portfolios.
5. Support for electronic portfolios (teaching, management, assessment, and continued development)
6. Release time for faculty to focus on assessment and continuous improvement.
7. Development of common rubrics for communication, problem solving, teaming and innovation.