Milestones

• • In 1997, the college adopted, for all departments, indirect assessment methods that had long been practiced by various individual departments: alumni surveys, senior exit surveys, and employer surveys. This centralization of indirect assessment activity reduced duplication of effort by departments, ensured that all departments would have a consistent stream of comprehensive, core assessment data, and allowed the creation of college-wide averages against which each program could benchmark.

  • In 2002, the college first launched a web-based guide to support faculty in planning and conducting both direct and indirect assessment of learning in engineering courses.

  • In 2003, the college launched the "Assessment for Curricular Improvement" website to give all faculty and staff access to CoE assessment reports: https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/engin-assessment/home.

  • In 2003, decision-makers such as the deans, department chairs, and the curriculum committee began hearing annual presentations of selected assessment results, triangulated to answer key faculty questions.

  • In 2004, annual presentations to decision-makers first included trends over multiple years of data collection.

  • In 2005, the "Assessment for Curricular Improvement" website was reconfigured

    • • To combine CoE's web resources related to planning and conducting both direct and indirect assessment and the growing web libraries of curricular goals and assessment reports and

      • To clarify our two-part strategy for supporting departments in identifying the strengths in their undergraduate programs and opportunities for improvement.