Preparation of Documents for ABET Accreditation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In March 2020, most colleges and universities forced to switch from face-to-face instruction to virtual instruction, due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The pandemic not only created challenges for the instructors and institutions to provide learning experience for students, it also created new challenges for engineering programs preparing for reaccreditation or accreditation of new program. During 2020-20 accreditation cycle, ABET conducted all ABET evaluations virtually and extend the evaluation period into the spring semester in 2021. The programs were required to provide digital documents to support their assessment data well in advance of the visit. Also, all the tour of the university facilities were done virtually. In most cases the programs were required to provide videos of laboratories and equipment used for the experiments. This paper will highlight the new challenges the programs face in preparing for ABET accreditation and provides suggestions on how to prepare documentation of assessment of student outcomes.