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Work In Progress: Using Internships as Means for Indirect Assessment of ABET Criteria 3 “1-7” Student Outcomes

Conference ·
OSTI ID:2565731

The Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at Portland State University (PSU) has developed a Power Engineering Internship (PEI) program that provides engineering career development pathways within the electric utility industry. The PEI is supported by several U.S. Department of Energy grants that aim to develop quality career opportunities and develop a future electric utility workforce that represents the nation’s diverse populations. The PSU ECE Department intends to use surveys of internship participants as assessment tools for its ABET accreditation process, in particular, the ABET Criteria 3 Student Outcomes (SOs). SOs relate to the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that students acquire as they progress through an engineering program [1]. They describe what engineering students are expected to know and should be able to do by the time they graduate. Engineering education literature presents multiple methods for using internships as means for assessing SOs. Methods include using self-assessments that derive from internship experiences as well as mapping survey responses from employers and interns to SOs. Such methods gain value as they are assessed over multiple years. However, the majority of this literature discusses assessment tools that were developed for the ABET 2000 Criteria 3 “a through k” SOs. One of our motivations is to provide assessment tools that can be used to assess modern Criteria 3 SOs based on students’ internship experiences.

Research Organization:
Portland General Electric
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
DOE Contract Number:
EE0010651
OSTI ID:
2565731
Report Number(s):
DE-EE0006501
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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