Engineering Student Attitudes Assessment

ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 requires engineering faculty to not only develop methods and measures for evaluating their specific degree programs, but also to use the resultant information to improve the educational process. While this implies a need to measure students' acquisition of knowledge and skills, we propose that much can be learned by measuring student attitudes and their changes over the student's four years of study. To demonstrate this, we present a case study which illustrates the use of three different techniques for obtaining attitudinal measures—focus groups, open-ended surveys and structured interviews, and closed-form questionnaires. The advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed, and results are presented to illustrate their collective value as part of a comprehensive evaluation system.