ABET 2016 Symposium Update
April, 2016
Prepared by Kay Schneider, Director of Assessment

ABET expects to refine the proposed changes to Criterion 3 and 5 in the next 14-15 months. If ABET
revises the a-k outcomes, these will likely be phased in over several years, beginning with the 201819 self-study cycle.

Assessment workshop leaders strongly encourage faculty to define performance indicators for each
outcome. Examples of indicators are:
o “Students will demonstrate knowledge of the professional code of ethics.”
o “Students will evaluate the ethical dimensions of a problem in the discipline.”
o “Students will listen to other teammates.”
o “Students will fulfill duties of team roles.”

Faculty do not need to provide examples of course materials, syllabi, and student work for core
curriculum courses.

It is a requirement to disaggregate data for multiple majors who are enrolled in a single course. (I
have shared this information with Civil and Environmental Engineering.)

Documenting the process of continuous improvement is more important than the actual
improvements.

Faculty must document the extent to which outcomes are met. This is not a met/not met dichotomy,
but more nuanced, to focus on “extent.”

Rather than designating primary or secondary emphasis of courses to outcomes in curriculum maps,
ABET recommends that courses be designated as introducing, reinforcing, or emphasizing the
outcomes.

Attached is a rubric for evaluating assessment plans. This is very similar to the rubric used by the
assessment committee, although the assessment committee does not evaluate performance
indicators and the PEOs.

Additional documentation of what did not change/what is working well, based on faculty members’
discussions of student outcomes, is needed. The assessment committee will modify the report
template that departments submit (to the assessment committee each fall) to emphasize this point.

There is not necessarily consensus among PEVs regarding expectations on a variety of topics. I
attended three sessions in which PEVs indicated that there are a variety of ways to interpret some of
the criteria and policies. Topics of inconsistency include:
o The recommendation for programs to utilize performance criteria was very strong, but a PEV
acknowledged that performance criteria are not mentioned in criteria for accreditation or
policy manual documents.
o One PEV indicated he would question if faculty set a performance standard of 75% (for
example), which implies that 25% of students “fail.” Is a 25% failure rate reasonable? Other
PEVs indicated it is not their role to question the standards that faculty set related to
achievement of outcomes.
o One PEV indicated that faculty need to make improvements even if students achieve
outcomes at the desired level (as determined by the faculty.) Another PEV indicated that
ABET requires continuous improvements only when students do not achieve outcomes.