Instructional Techniques for Teaching Engineering Students – Designing your courses to meet ABET criteria

What is your role as engineering faculty? What steps do you take to ensure your students achieve your course outcomes?  And oh, by the way, what are outcomes…

Creating a course to achieve specific outcomes requires effort in three domains: (Felder and Brent, 2003)

  1. Identifying course content and defining measurable learning objectives
  2. Selecting and implementing methods that will be used to deliver the specified content and facilitate student achievement
  3. Selecting and implementing methods that will be used to determine whether and how well the learning objectives have been achieved

Some of ABETs engineering outcomes may also have little to do with engineering skills, for example: communication and working in team skills.  Some engineering faculty have difficulty with incorporating these skills into their courses because it’s unfamiliar territory to them and they have difficulty measure these outcomes.

Much has been written about engineering outcomes, but little has been written about what must be done to achieve those outcomes.

In the article linked below, you will be introduced to Engineering ABET criteria and the process to design and develop your courses. And best of all what to do to achieve them.

http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Papers/ABET_Paper_(JEE).pdf