BACKGROUND

In the early 1990’s, the first of a series of reports emerged that recognized serious deficiencies in engineering education and called for major reforms. The American Society for Engineering Education’s Engineering Education for A Changing World proclaimed that "engineering education programs must not only teach the fundamentals of engineering theory, experimentation, and practice, but be relevant, attractive and connected," preparing students for a broad range of careers and lifelong learning [1]. Today’s education must provide the "technical knowledge and capabilities, flexibility and an understanding of the societal context of engineering." To the ASEE, "coursework should feature multidisciplinary, collaborative, active learning and take into account students’ varied learning styles." 

The National Science Foundation’s complementary report, Restructuring Engineering Education: A Focus on Change, stressed similar themes [2]. It recommended that laboratory and internship experiences provide broader contexts where students would view trade-offs in the design, development and implementation of engineering systems. Broad, flexible curricula would prepare students for both leadership and specialist roles. Engineering education would become flexible enough to support diverse career aspirations and agile enough to enable rapid transformation in response to emerging social demands. Engineering courses should include a broad range of concerns: environmental, political and social issues; international and historical contexts; and legal and ethical ramifications.

The National Research Council’s Board of Engineering Education also recommended a number of actions for curriculum reform "including early exposure to ‘real’ engineering and more extensive exposure to interdisciplinary, hands-on, industrial practice aspects, team work, systems thinking and creative design" [3]. Three leading educators, Bordogna, Fromm, and Ernst, called for educators to "create an intellectual environment where students can develop an awareness of the impact of emerging technologies, an appreciation of engineering as an integral process of societal change, and an acceptance of responsibility for civilization’s progress." [4]

In response to this call to revitalize engineering education, the NSF created the Undergraduate Engineering Education Coalition Program, a bold initiative aimed at "revolutionizing" education [5]. In all, eight coalitions involving 58 schools have been funded. Collectively, they have produced a large quantity of curricula innovations, many of which are discussed in the recent proceedings of the ASEE national meetings and Frontiers in Education Conferences [6]. In addition, the NSF’s Division of Undergraduate Education has funded a series of Curriculum and Course Development projects, many of which were targeted towards improving engineering education. 

Concomitantly, a group of leading engineering deans and educators, realizing that the current ABET accreditation criteria were stifling innovation, began the process that in 1995 led to EC-2000. To a large extent the collective recommendations have been incorporated into the new criteria, creating the current need for outcome assessment methodologies. A first consequence of EC-2000 was the Joint Task Force on Engineering Education Assessment’s "White Paper" that called for the development of multiple assessment tools to assist in evaluating engineering program quality [7]. Two years after that paper’s release, a number of efforts at assessment have emerged [8]. 

Three major conferences on engineering assessment have highlighted the need for methodologies. The first, Best Assessment Processes in Engineering Education [9] held at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in April, 1997 was chaired by three of the principals of this project (Rogers, Olds and Miller. Highly successful, a follow-up "Best Practices" conference was held at RHIT in October 1998. In September 1997, a well-attended National Conference on Outcomes Assessment focused on the state of this important area [10]. It demonstrated that engineering educators could learn much from those who have been applying assessment methodologies in other areas [11].

Hence, there is no need to "re-invent the wheel," rather we need to transform what has been invented into a format that schools can readily use with confidence, as many schools simply do not have the resources to do this on their own.