Program Educational Objectives

 

The Applied Electrical Engineering program provides broad foundations to achieve the following objectives:

1. Graduates will have a successful career in Electrical Engineering.

2. Graduates will advance to positions of leadership in their profession.

3. Graduates may pursue their professional development through self learning and advanced degrees.
    

The outcomes of the Applied Electrical Engineering Program are to provide students with abilities to:

 

1. Apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering.

2. Design and conduct electrical engineering experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data.

3. Design an electrical system, component, or process to meet desired needs.

4. Function on multi-disciplinary teams.

5. Identify, formulate, and solve electrical engineering problems.

6. Understand professional and ethical responsibility.

7. Communicate effectively.

8. Acquire the broad education necessary to understand the impact of electrical engineering solutions in a global and societal context.

9. Recognize the need for, and be able to engage in life-long learning.

10. Acquire knowledge of contemporary issues.

11. Use the techniques, skills, and modem electrical engineering tools necessary for engineering practice.

12. Apply the probabilistic methods and statistics to electrical engineering problems.

13. Use effectively hands on experience for handling electrical engineering problems.

 

Assessment Plan

 

The EE Program Assessment Committee has adopted the newly rubric based method for EE program outcome assessment. The program outcomes were first divided into groups. Each group of outcomes is to be assessed and evaluated based on a three-year cycle, beginning in Term 081. At the end of the assessment and evaluation cycle of a given group of program outcomes, the results of the evaluation will be used to qualitatively assess the EE program in order to identify its strengths and more importantly its weaknesses in relation to that group of program outcomes. At the end of each sub-cycle (i.e. every semester), the Program Assessment Committee will communicate its findings (i.e. the results of the assessment and evaluation processes for the current group of outcomes) to the Department Council for debate. Following debate, implementation of agreed-upon corrective action(s), if any, will be followed through by the concerned faculty members and/or the departmental Curriculum Committee in coordination with the Program Assessment Committee.

 

In order to achieve an efficient process, the assessment committee has decided that assessment of the program outcomes, using the rubric approach, will only involve the following sources: EE 201 (Electric Circuits I), all 300-level courses, and EE 411 (Senior Design Project). However, assessment data are to be drawn from EE 411 in all semesters, with the exception of Term 102. For easy access, Table 1 shows the planned data collection three-year cycle.

   

Table 1: Three-Year Cyclic Program Outcome Assessment Plan.

 

 

Rubrics and Performance Indicators

A set of rubrics are needed in order to qualitatively assess each individual program outcome. Prior to development of these rubrics, the rubrics were first separated into two groups, namely: generic rubrics and course-specific rubrics. The rationale for this approach is based on the idea that some program outcomes are of such a general nature [e.g. outcome (g): communicate effectively] that allows them to be assessed by utilizing a set of generic performance indicators (i.e. generic rubric). On the other hand, other outcomes [e.g. outcome (a): apply mathematics…] can be best assessed using specific performance indicators tailored for the courses to be used in the assessment of those outcomes (i.e. course-specific rubric). Table 2 shows the classification of the rubrics to be used in the assessment of the program outcomes into generic and course-specific rubrics.

 

 

Table 2: Generic and Course-Specific Rubrics

 

 

The generic rubrics indicated in table 3.16, which correspond to program outcomes (b), (d), (f), (g), (i), (j) and (m), are named RBG, RDG, RFG, RGG, RIG, RJG and RMG, respectively. In this naming scheme, the first letter "R" refers to the word rubric, the second letter refers to the program outcome, and finally the letter "G" in the rubric name refers to the word generic. The naming scheme for the course-specific rubrics follows a similar format. However, the letter "G" is replaced by the course number. For instance, if the course EEXXX is to be used as a source for assessment of outcomes (a) and (c), then the corresponding rubric names are RA-EEXXX and RC-EEXXX, respectively. All rubrics are illustrated below.