Creating a culture of assessment within an engineering academic department

EC2000 changes to ABET accreditation have emphasized outcomes-based assessment in engineering courses and curricula. All faculty in an engineering department have some responsibility for assessment, but few have the time, training or resources to do it as well as wepsilad like. In this paper, we review the literature on developing a culture of assessment, including characteristics of well-known assessment cultures (e.g., at Alverno and Rose-Hulman). Then, we describe a procedure that departments without a longstanding culture of assessment can use to address local concerns and promote faculty buy-in for new policies. Specifically, we present systematic analysis of faculty interviews using qualitative research data analysis coding procedures. All instructors were asked about assessment priorities and current efforts to collect and pool assessment data. Assessment priorities within the department were identified from this input, and recommendations were made for developing data collection and archiving procedures, updating department policies, and distributing assessment responsibilities across department instructors, administrators and appropriate committees. This paper presents the procedure for gathering input from instructors as a transferable model to other departments and institutions while providing a concrete example of outcomes to expect from it.