Faculty Course Assessment Report

Preamble

I now have attended 2 gatherings associated with the ABET. Based on my current understanding, I think we need to restart producing, for each course, what is referred to as a Faculty Course Assessment Report. We had done what can be considered a version of this report during our last accreditation. However, when we passed with flying colors, I somehow got the impression that we did not need to continue this practice until the year before the next accreditation visit. We did, for a time, continue to gather course material. We stopped gathering course material in the fall of 2005, but should have restarted the course report at that time. So, I am asking that we restart a form of Faculty Course Assessment Report this quarter.

In what follows, I describe the content of an Faculty Course Assessment Report for spring 2006. During the spring quarter, I hope to talk to the faculty about enhancing this version of the Faculty Course Assessment Report, to increase the likelihood of a good outcome on our next ABET visit.

Introduction

Faculty Course Assessment Reports (FCAR)[1] are produced at the end of every quarter by every instructor teaching an undergraduate course. The content is an abbreviated version of the FCAR described by John Estell[1]. The content of the FCAR They combine information from instructors with surveys of student opinion about the degree to which course objectives were achieved.

Course reports are reviewed by the Curriculum committee [should it be the Program Assessment  & Evaluation Committee?], which may choose to recommend changes to a course. Any approved changes are documented in the ABET annual report.

Format


Item Description
Course number: Title
Instructor name
Year - quarter
Topics A list of noun phrases, each of which describes a subject that is covered.
Give an approximate number of hours actually devoted to each subject. For example, "heaps: 1"
Student survey
Course goal Average at end of course
1 row/goal 5 = Excellent
4 = Very good
3 = Adequate
2 = Less than adequate
1 = Poor
Problems in course content or execution The instructor describes problems encountered, if any.
Suggested improvements in course content or execution The instructor describes suggestions, if any.

Sample

References

  1. Estell, John. Streamlining the Assessment Process with the Faculty Course Assessment Report. In Proc. Best Assessment Practices, p. 61, Feb. 2006.