Engineering institutions have a responsibility to its students to prepare them to address today’s global challenges and needs.  National priorities, institutional goals, and accreditation standards (such as ABET criteria) are used as professionally as desired outcome qualifications. While the desired outcomes have been described, there is less understanding of the process by which this occurs. From a systems engineering perspective, an understanding of the processes that transform inputs to outputs is critical. This systems engineering lens was focused on engineering education in this study.

Purdue University is a leading producer engineering undergraduates; and thus, plays a unique role in the development of future engineers. Courses in the Purdue engineering curriculum must map directly and indirectly to three sets of learning outcome expectations established by multiple stakeholders with different motivations and priorities. Before this study, no one has looked at empirical relationships between the three sets of learning outcomes of interest in this study. Thus, a primary purpose of this study was to determine aspects of and relationships between direct and indirect mappings of measures of learning outcomes in lower division engineering education, and to see how they relate over time.

This study identified relationships between accreditation standards and courses. Additionally, a new approach is used to determine the alignment between three sets of learning outcomes. Finally, a computer software process model capability is developed to model learning outcomes transformations that occur during the first and second year of the undergraduate engineering curriculum. The findings of this study have the potential to impact many assessment processes in engineering education.

Jeremi S. London is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. In 2008, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Purdue, and a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from Purdue in 2013. Her research interests include: the use of cyberlearning resources in undergraduate engineering education; characterizing the impact of federally funded STEM education projects; information alignment within the context of undergraduate STEM education; and exploring ways in which computer simulations can be used to understand education systems. In addition to conducting mixed methods research in formal academic settings, she has worked in various Industrial Engineering roles at Anheuser-Busch, Inc., and General Electric-Healthcare. Finally, she continues to conduct education policy research as part of her role in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation.