Program assessment and program improvement: closing the loop

Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC 2000), the recently revised set of accreditation criteria for engineering programs in the USA, places considerable stress on outcomes assessments. EC 2000 requires the assessment results to be used to identify program improvements and for such usage and the resulting improvements to be documented. While numerous assessment instruments have been developed and discussed in the literature, less attention has been paid to the question of how to use these to improve the programs or to document this usage. In this paper, we present an approach that serves both to identify possible improvements based on the results of assessments, as well as to provide high quality documentation. As an added bonus, it also helps incoming students and new faculty to get a good understanding of the structure and evolution of the program.