Curriculum Assessment in Biomedical Engineering

Richard T. Hart, Ph.DEdgar C. Hendrickson Professor and Department Chair

April 4, 2014

BMEs “Course Roundup”A “course roundup” meeting at the end of each semester allows faculty to participate in a process for continuous quality improvement for individual courses, share best practices, and monitor initiation and development of pre-requisite content. The process allows for discussion and monitoring of the whole curriculum — undergraduate and graduate — providing opportunities to propose changes and monitor outcomes.

This presentation is based on a process that works for a small engineering department, and would likely require adjustments for other disciplines and department sizes.

Pre-meeting materials: Course template

Faculty members prepare material to fill in a template* for each course taught during the semester. The completed materials, plus the course syllabus, are uploaded to a special section of Carmen to be available to all faculty before, during, and after the meeting.

* Handout available

Pre-meeting materials: Course template Template materials include:1. Course CQI (Continuous Quality Improvement) table:

Issue or Problem, Proposed Change or Improvement, Effect of change next time taught

2. Department CQI: items to add or address?3. Summary of course objectives, highlighting changes

since last offering.4. Specific outcome measures of course objectives:

A. Graded work: Subset of graded materials (e.g., test question) that focus on a course objective.

B. Student opinions: From end-of-semester electronic survey

Pre-meeting materials: Course template

5. Any specific “wins” from the course? Student outcomes beyond the expected? How did you document this?

6. Any particular disappointments in the course? Student outcomes less than satisfactory? Did students learn what you had envisioned? How did you document this?

7. Any challenges for which you want to solicit suggestions?

8. Did you and the students enjoy the course — why or why not?

Pre-meeting materials: Course template 9. Threads: Are there topics or techniques that you

expected to build upon, those you hope will be picked up? Specific pre-requisite material that you thought was needed that the students didn’t have?

10. Curricular elements: Any issues to discuss related to:A. CreativityB. Hands-on LabsC. Modeling and simulationD. Technical Communication

11. Thoughts on need for, experience with, and/or potential for increasing student participation during class, e.g., “flipping the classroom,” working in groups, clickers, etc.? Distance learning?

Course Roundup Meeting

During the meeting, each instructor is asked to spend about 20 minutes discussing their class. Once the faculty have several years of experience with the process, the focus is on new topics and issues.Some classes, that delve into common issues, take more than 20 minuets. For example, we have shared rubrics for evaluating oral presentations, written lab reports, and discussed best practices for managing group projects and assignments, and proactively dealing with code of student conduct issues.

Post Meeting A portion of the meeting is self-documented by having the completed templates available on Carmen.Immediately following the meeting, the notes taken during the meeting are distributed to all participants (including advising staff who attend the roundup). The meeting, the documentation, and the resultant changes all contribute to improved undergraduate and graduate curricula. An additional benefit is that the much of the ABET accreditation process is “baked in” and the documentation needed for the self study report is generated and preserved.

Thanks for the opportunity

to present this today!

Questions?