Customizing the EPSA rubric to cover local curriculum content for assessment of engineering professional skills
CONTEXT The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology Engineering Criteria 2000 (ABET EC 2000) identifies two areas of expertise, commonly distinguished as "hard engineering skills" and "soft engineering skills" with the latter also known as Engineering Professional Skills (EPS) EPS includes skills such as communication, teamwork, and ethical responsibility, and professionalism, awareness of the impact of engineering solutions on society, life long learning and understanding of contemporary issues. The criteria of ABET EC 2000 have been widely adopted by many engineering programs as program outcome criteria. Recently a rubric has been developed to facilitate engineering professional skill assessment (EPSA) in the context of ABET EC 2000 criteria. However, any engineering program is likely to be strongly influenced by both the global and local situations faced by the country in which the engineering program is located. For instance, in a developing country like Indonesia, in addition to ABET EC 2000, the curriculum must simultaneously cover both the national (core) curriculum and the local (institutional) curriculum. (This requirement is stipulated by a Decree of the Minister of National Education of the Republic of Indonesia No. 232/U/2000 about Guidelines for Proposing of Higher Education Curriculum and Assessment of Student Learning) This necessitates a requirement for assessment that evaluates students' understanding of both ABET EC 2000 and the national and local curricula.