Preparing for Accreditation Under EC 2000: An Experience Report
Preparing for an accreditation evaluation under Engineering Criteria 2000 is a demanding task. For many programs, the most challenging requirements of the criteria have to do with establishing mechanisms to obtain input from various constituencies, formulating objectives on the basis of these inputs, formulating outcomes corresponding to each objective, establishing a range of assessment mechanisms to evaluate the program and outcomes, and establishing feedback mechanisms to use the results of the assessment to improve the program. This paper presents the experience of one program and some of the lessons learned.
THE ATTRIBUTE ASSESSMENT PROCESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA
This paper describes a recent effort at the University of Manitoba to identify how CEAB graduate attributes are manifested and measured in the engineering curriculum. For this study, four attributes were chosen: Investigation and Design, part of the engineering hard skills, and Professionalism and Lifelong learning as representative of the professional skills of engineering. One third year course each from the Departments of Biosystems, Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical and Computer Engineering were selected to examine the four target attributes during the 2011 Fall term. The respective instructors were involved in completing a self-administered checklist with the intent to survey instructors’ understanding of how the four CEAB attributes were manifest in their courses, and mapping the targeted attributes to the identified courses. Results show that there is much more research needed in this area, with continued emphasis on the manifestation of the twelve CEAB attributes in individual courses, as well as research on student proficiency, and methods of communicating assessment. Although this study did not set out to compare the attributes to one another, there was some evidence that of the four attributes being measured across the four courses, hard skills were more prominently assessed than professional skills.
Prediction of a representative point for rail temperature measurement by considering longitudinal deformation
Monitoring rail temperature is very important for determining the safe running speed of trains and to prevent buckling. In general, the maximum variation of the internal rail temperature can be >7 ℃ depending on the point of measurement. However, there is as yet no sufficient information about how to predict the measurement point to represent the thermal deformation due to temperature distribution. In this study, the authors report a new point, called the representative measurement point, at which the rail temperature can be measured. This point considers the average deformation of the rail through structural analysis by adopting experimental and actual rail temperature data. The authors designed and installed a measurement system similar to an actual rail environment. Using the system, various data were acquired (internal/surface rail temperature and weather data) for 10 months. On the basis of these data, an analysis was done to calculate the average deformation point through thermal analysis. Finally, the representative measurement point was proposed as the position at which the average deformation point converges regardless of weather or seasons. The authors believe that the method described herein is advantageous in that it could be used in a high-accuracy temperature-monitoring system and for predicting thermal deformation and buckling.