ABET - How To

If you’re teaching a course which is part of an accredited program, you’ll need to provide information regarding how each of your Measurable Student Learning Outcomes (Sometimes referred to as Course Learning Outcomes or CLOs) was or wasn’t met during each term of teaching. The process can be time-consuming, but with a well-designed course it shouldn’t be too onerous.

Notable Steps

  1. Instructor notified by email at beginning of term.
    This notice gives you a chance to check the database fields for your course, and ensure they line up with your course’s CLOs (in the syllabus) and that they’re being properly assessed.
  2. Course Evaluation Request
    Near the end of the term you’ll receive an email which reminds you to file the ABET report. There will be a link in this email which takes you to the ABET form site. After the term concludes, you should collect the pertinent information and submit it to this site.

Associating CLOs to Assessments

For more information on what CLOs are and how they relate to course organization, please check the CLO reference page. For accreditation, each course CLO must be included in the learning materials of the course, and must be assessed at some point during the term. These assessments are key to filing the ABET end-of-term reports. If you have no metric for gauging a CLO, you’ll be unable to file the report. Please note that while you need at least one assessment per CLO, you may have more than one. It is not recommended that you include more than two, however, since the data collection for so many assessments will take quite a bit of time.

Collecting Metrics

Collecting data is the most significant part of the ABET entry process. Each Learning Outcomes is labeled as either Quantitative or Qualitative, and the information you collect is different for each of these.

Quantitative Metrics

Quantitative metrics are gauged numerically, so you’ll need the following data for each Quantitative CLO…

For each Assessment Method…

  1. Assessment Method Name
  2. Mean score (%)
  3. Median score (%)
  4. Assignment score percentages that you would consider to be…
    • Meeting Expectations
    • Exceeding Expectations
  5. Performance Target - the percentage of students who must meet expectations for you to consider the CLO to be met for the class.
  6. The percentage of students who met expectations but did not exceed them, according to the definitions above.
  7. The percentage of students who exceeded expectations according to the definitions above.
  8. Three PDF samples of student work. Each should be an example of student work consistent with what you defined as…
    • Exceeds Expectations
    • Meeds Expectations
    • Does Not Meet Expectations

Qualitative Metrics

For Qualitative Metrics you must provide a detailed description of the measures you used in the course to assess this outcome, which will be entered in an all-text field on the submission page.

Completing the Form

After you’ve collected the information described above, the process to enter it into the ABET DCT system is quite simple. Don Heer has provided a couple short videos which are linked from the ABET form site’s “My Courses” list. I’ve linked them here as well, for reference.

  1. Demo 1 - New Courses and Overview
  2. Demo 2 - Completing Course and File Upload

FAQ

  1. Q: What is Total Enrollment vs Assessment Cohort Size?
    A: Starting Spring 2022, Total Enrollment and Assessment Cohort Size are equal to the total section enrollment values.

If you have issues with the ABET entry process, please contact Don Heer. If you have issues with CLOs, such as CLOs not matching your syllabus or a need to revise the CLOs, please contact the CS Curriculum Committee via Justin Wolford.