scholarly journals ASSESSING CEAB GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES AT RYERSON UNIVERSITY: FRAMEWORK AND INGREDIENTS FOR SUCCESS

Author(s):  
Said Easa ◽  
Mohamed Lachemi

The Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) has recently introduced a new criterion for accreditation of engineering programs. The criterion included 12 graduate attributes. Each engineering program must have a system in place for assessing these attributes and using the assessment results to continuously improve the engineering program. The development of a system for assessing CEAB graduate attributes at Ryerson University has started in April 2010. This paper highlights the developed system, including framework, elements, process, and ingredients for success.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Harold Jan Redonda Terano

This research presents the revision of the current curriculum of the Master of Engineering program at Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges in the Philippines through series of consultations and FGDs with the faculty and students of the graduate pro-gram and industry practitioners, and the development of integrated curricula using CDIO framework. Standards 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and syllabus v2.0 of the CDIO frame-work were used in the development of the integrated curricula. Graduate attributes were developed, and the result of the industry needs survey served as one of the bases in the integration of various skill sets in the integrated curricula for the master of engineering programs.


Author(s):  
Guy Cloutier ◽  
Ronald Hugo ◽  
Rick Sellens

The recently introduced Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) requirements for Graduate Attributes require demonstrated learning outcomes for the first time. The Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate (CDIO) approach includes a set of outcomes in the form of the CDIO Syllabus. The Syllabus also provides guidance on how to document outcomes in order to meet the requirements of the CEAB Graduate Attributes. This article provides a framework for Canadian engineering programs to satisfy the CEAB requirement to demonstrate learning outcomes through a mapping of the CDIO Syllabus topics to the CEAB Attributes, and verification of the completeness of that list. An engineering program can meet all of the CEAB Graduate Attribute requirements by addressing a subset of the CDIO syllabus; however, a CEAB accredited program may not meet all of the CDIO standards.


Author(s):  
Laura Patterson ◽  
Carolyn Labun ◽  
Jannik Eikenaar

Recent changes to CEAB’s accreditation process have resulted in the need for engineering programs in Canada to find ways to assess critical graduate attributes. While many of the attributes can be measured through traditional methods, others are more subtle and challenging to assess. One that can be particularly challenging both to teach and assess is lifelong learning. As its name suggests, lifelong learning is a process that begins before and continues after a person’s formal education; it is a learner-initiated activity or habit of mind. As such, educators must develop ways to ensure that students understand the importance of learning itself, both during and after their formal engineering studies.Technical Communication courses are excellent vehicles for delivering and reinforcing the skills and competencies associated with lifelong learning. This paper will explore how “Lifelong Learning” as a CEAB graduate attribute can be taught and assessed in communication courses (APSC 176 and APSC 201) housed in an engineering program at UBC’s School of Engineering. This paper will also explore the next steps in developing appropriate metrics for determining the success of these courses in  meeting this element of accreditation.


Author(s):  
Robert W. Brennan ◽  
Ronald Hugo ◽  
William D. Rosehart

Recent changes to the criteria for engineering accreditation in Canada emphasize continuous curriculum improvement through outcomes-based assessment. In this article, the authors show how the CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) approach not only enables continuous improvement, but can assist Canadian engineering programs with the overall graduate attributes assessment process through a case study of the B.Sc. in mechanical engineering program at the Schulich School of Engineering.


Author(s):  
Aneta George ◽  
Liam Peyton

The Graduate Attribute Information Analysis system (GAIA) was developed at the University of Ottawa to support data collection and performance management of graduate attributes for engineering programs at the program level and at the course level [10]. This paper reports on our research to develop support for cohort analysis and reporting by providing a single consistent view of graduate attributes (GA) and performance indicators for groups of students who started and finished an engineering program at the same time. This is supported by two special purpose reports: Graduate Attribute Report per Cohort (GAR/C) and Course Progression Report per Cohort (CPR/C). The former shows average GA data per attribute, the latter tracks student achievement as students progress in their program. It also adds to the historic data trend analysis for a program. Furthermore, a COOP Progress Report per cohort (COOPR/C) is generated.


Author(s):  
Hugh Jack ◽  
John Farris ◽  
Shabbir Choudhuri ◽  
Princewill Anyalebechi ◽  
Charlie Standridge

A Product Design and Manufacturing (PDM) Engineering emphasis has been designed to update a Manufacturing Engineering program at Grand Valley State University. While the program continues to include a major focus on manufacturing it also emphasizes crossing disciplinary boundaries for product design. Graduates of the program are educated to work in all phases of the product development process from concept to customer. The program includes a blend of courses from a variety of disciplines, tieing these together using a sequence of product design courses. Within the courses students are exposed to course work that encourages product oriented design including prototyping. The program redesign described in the paper could also be applied to Mechanical Engineering programs.


Author(s):  
Bryson Robertson ◽  
Margaret Gwyn ◽  
LillAnne Jackson ◽  
Peter Wild

This paper describes a proposed redesign of the instruction and assessment of the Co-operative (Co-op) Education (or work term) components of the University of Victoria Engineering program. The redesign ensures instruction and assessment of the higher-level Graduate Attributes (GAs), such as individual and teamwork, communication skills, professionalism, impact on society, ethics and equity, economics and project management, and life-long learning, that may not be included in all of the technical courses in a traditional Engineering curriculum. Concurrently, the redesign includes a renewed emphasis on improving the technical writing competency of graduating engineers by: ‘laddering’ student technical writing development; introduction a new grading scheme; increased timeframes for report revisions; and, finally, reducing the number of pedagogically ineffective reports required to graduate.


Author(s):  
Govind Gopakumar ◽  
Deborah Dusart-Gale ◽  
Ali Akgunduz

In 2009 the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) announced its intention requiring all undergraduate engineering programs in Canada to utilize twelve graduate attributes for assessing the capacities of its students. In response, engineering faculties across the country have been experimenting with creating processes that incorporate these graduate attributes as a means to stimulate program improvement to achieve curricular and program innovation. Many of the support resources (like the inter-university collaboration EGAD, for example) have focused largely in three directions – definitional, programmatic and information management challenges faced by different engineering programs.Less attention has been given to identifying and addressing leadership challenges faced by faculty administrators in piloting curricular and programmatic changes such as the CEAB graduate attributes. We argue that these challenges result from fundamental features of university educational culture: faculty members place great value upon autonomy in their workplace, and likewise expect a high degree of intellectual independence in designing courses. The introduction of CEAB attributes, together with the mandated changes they will bring to course design, is perceived by faculty members as an external imposition. Such a perception we suggest introduces some scepticism in the faculty about its efficacy leading to a disengagement from the change process. Thorough attention to these cultural factors impacting on graduate attributes adoption is crucial to the implementation of successful curriculum development.Describing these challenges in detail, this paper will outline some pathways that can circumvent these impediments to curricular innovation.


Author(s):  
Leonard Lye

Starting 2014, engineering programs in Canada will be evaluated by CEAB based on twelve Graduate Attributes and institutions must demonstrate that their graduates possess these attributes at the time of graduation. One of these attributes is “Investigations” which is defined by CEAB as “an ability to conduct investigations of complex problems by methods that include appropriate experiments, analysis and interpretation of data, and synthesis of information in order to reach valid conclusions.” This is similar to one of ABET's student outcomes which states that students attain "an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data". In this paper, it will be argued that with the current curriculum of most, if not all, engineering schools in Canada, it is almost impossible for graduates to possess this attribute unless a compulsory course is introduced to specifically teach the subject. Proper design, conduct, and analysis of experiments of complex problems cannot be learned by osmosis or by doing standard labs where the procedure and analysis methods are given. Engineering educators and graduates thinking that somehow that the skill to design, conduct and analyze experiments will be learned in an engineering program do not fully appreciate the myriad of issues that are involved with experimentation to study a complex problem. Examples of these issues include: a large number of variables, multiple responses with conflicting objectives, linear or nonlinear responses, interaction among variables, etc. In this paper, these issues and many others will be discussed. How they can be addressed will be discussed and a course that will help graduates achieve competence in “Investigations” is also proposed.


Author(s):  
Laura Patterson

This paper is a continuation of research from a previous paper presented to CEEA on a three-year longitudinal study aimed at assessing engineering accreditation non-technical skills at a medium sized engineering school at a large research university.  The goal of this longitudinal study is to improve the assessment of these non-technical graduate attributes and test a metric to do so.  The Likert-style survey focuses on engineering students self-perceptions of teamwork, communication skills, engineering ethics, professionalism, and lifelong learning in order to gather quantitative data that can be analyzed for trends. Self-perceptions are the focus of this study because student self-efficacy has been found to be correlated with student success over the long term. The study has been conducted through pre-and post-surveys testing whether engineering students’ self-assessment of their abilities in those areas increased or decreased from year to year.  Currently, the longitudinal study has only just completed data collection for its final year of the three-year study, so the focus of this paper will be adding the results of the second year to the first, which were presented to CEEA last year. This paper analyzes the data gathered in the second year of the longitudinal study and continue the analysis of those results to explore what they can offer to our understanding of non-technical engineering graduate attributes. These findings are not meant to replace other initiatives, but to offer another metric to examine the effectiveness of engineering programs and meeting non-technical accreditation requirements. 


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