The EECS program is committed to the continous improvement process in each of its three undergraduate majors.
- Electrical Engineering (EE): following the EAC (a)-(k) student outcomes
- Computer Engineering (CpE): following the EAC (a)-(k) student outcomes
- Computer Science and Engineering (CSE): following both the EAC (a)-(k) and CAC (a)-(m) student outcomes
The process includes
- Collecting assessment data (samples of course work and exams, faculty course assessment report -- FCAR)
- Analyze data
- Propose feedback
We currently assess required courses in each major. Note that not all required courses need to be assessed every quarter, and not all students need to be assessed, but it must be possible for any student in the major to have all outcomes assessed.
Data collection
- The instructor of an assessed course must provide (high, average, and low) samples of student assignments and exams throughout the course. This can be done with the help of the TA or grader.
- As with many departments, in EECS we use an FCAR form. FCAR, for Faculty Course Assessment Report, is a structured way to show how each of the assessed outcomes is assessed (i.e., which assignment, problem, exam etc), how many students are sampled, the score threshold for satisfactory performance, and comments from faculty for the other instructors (prerequisite, next offering, etc) to improve.
People
- Program Leads
- CpE: Pai Chou (2015-), Associate Chair for CpE
- EE: Ozdal Boyraz (2016-), Associate Chair for EE
- CSE: Dan Hirschberg (CS), Pai Chou (EECS)
- Staff
Data
The FCARs are maintained by these two program leads. They have been kept as Word files, but they have been moved to the AEFIS (via WebVPN) system starting Winter 2017. AEFIS is accessible within UCI domain only, so if you have to access it from outside UCI, you have to use VPN, or click on the via WebVPN link (which is slower and may look different).
For CSE major, the program leads are Dan Hirschberg (CS) and Pai Chou (EECS). Dan currently maintains his own FCAR tool at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~dan/fcar.html. Note: Dan's tool requires you to enter your data into an HTML form, but it is just a formatting tool; there is no "server" when you click "finalize." Instead, it simply gives you a formatted web page, and you have to save it as an HTML file on your own computer and mail the HTML to him. So, you can't use this incrementally to input your data or comments over time, but you have to do it in one single sitting. Eventually this will be replaced by AEFIS (via WebVPN) also but it probably will not happen any time soon.
Best Practices
- The program lead should periodically check the student learning outcomes (SLO) for each course and ask the course coordinators to update the course outlines accordingly.
- The program leads are expected to call for curriculum meetings to review the FCARs and make improvements to the curriculum. The meeting minutes should be kept and actions should be documented as records for the purpose of accreditation.
- The program leads should also review the sample materials and make sure they are coherent not only within a course but across courses.
- No course (such as senior projects or technical writing) should be burdened with assessing a disproportional number of outcomes. All required courses should assess some outcomes, or else their purpse in the program becomes questionable.
- Teaching assignment should also consider the burden of assesment. All faculty at some point should be assigned courses that require assessment in order for the whole department to fully understand and engage in the process of continuous improvement. In particular, no course should be considered a dumping ground for all the outcomes that instructors in other courses find it difficut to assess.
- Since only courses that are required of all students in the major are useful for assessment, those courses that are "required for specialization" in EE are not useful for the purpose of assessment.