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| Administrative offices |
Academic Degree Program Assessment
School of Computing and Software Engineering
Use of Results Report
MS Software Engineering
1. Please list the Program Outcomes which were met and briefly discuss these.
- Apply advanced mathematics and science to the engineering of software systems.
- Demonstrate knowledge and utilization of software processes, software architecture or models, and the mapping of underlying techniques into the problem domain.
- Demonstrate the ability to analyze, assess, verify and validate, and evaluate artifacts of software engineering systems.
- Contribute to teams in the design, implementation, management and evolution of software systems.
- Demonstrate effective technical oral and written communication skills as expected in the discipline.
- Independently learn and research new topics in software engineering.
All of the program outcomes for the MSSWE program are listed above, and have been met. They are measured through the overall EPAN results on the different courses contributing to those outcomes. When the EPAN summaries are averaged for all the courses, it is clear that the desired threshold (of 2 out of 3) was exceeded for all the above outcomes.
2.If any program outcomes were not met, please list these and discuss these in more detail.
While the following outcomes were met, a concern was indicated by the results on the following outcomes:
- Apply advanced mathematics and science to the engineering of software systems.
- Demonstrate the ability to analyze, assess, verify and validate, and evaluate artifacts of software engineering systems.
- Independently learn and research new topics in software engineering.
For all three of these outcomes, the committee felt they should be evaluated in a different course than they were previously being evaluated. For #1, it was incorrectly being evaluated in SWE 6623, and should be removed from assessment in that course and added as a program outcome to be assessed in SWE 6723/6903. Outcome #3 should be assessed in SWE 6743, and outcome #6 should be removed from SWE 6723 and added to SWE 6623.
The EPAN summary on outcome #3 for SWE 6763 was 1.6, which is below the desired 2.0. It should, however, be kept in mind that the average EPAN summary over all courses exceeded the desired threshold of 2.0 (on a 0-3 scale) for this outcome as well as all the outcomes.
3. Chairs:
A. Please discuss how you think that or anticipate that these results might be used.
The following suggestions for improvement have been made and will be considered for implementation:
- The single lowest FCAR was in SWE 6763 Software Metrics and Quality Assurance on outcome #3 which had an EPAN average of 1.6. We determined that a probable cause of this deficiency is that our MSSWE students have a weak background in probability and statistics. While probability and statistics is required for our undergraduate software engineering students, our MSSWE does not have that as a prerequisite course. We plan to investigate the existence of a prerequisite course in probability and statistics and discuss the pros and cons of adding to our curriculum. We need to do further analysis to see if this is in fact a trend in our students or a one-time deficiency in the population of that particular section.
- Since SWE 6623 is the first class on software engineering, there is a lot of content in that course. While there are a couple of topics that emphasize the application of mathematics and science to the engineering of software, the course doesn not go into much depth in this area. Therefore we suggest removing assessment of P.O. #1 from SWE 6623 and instead, add it as a P.O. to be assessed in 6723/6903, which is the second course and it emphasizes testing and measurement and is more applicable for P.O.#1.
- Add P.O. #3 to be assessed in SWE 6743 Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. This outcome is directly related to the course content and it’s omission from the course must have been an oversight.
- Remove outcome #6 from SWE 6723, as the curriculum is already very full and the students do not do research in that class, and instead add it to SWE 6623, which has a research component but is not being assessed. Again, this was probably an oversight.
B. Please note below when you are tentatively planning to discuss these results and the use of these results with your faculty and with others.
These results have been discussed at the August 22 meeting and a prioritization is in progress by the respective subcommittees for implementation purposes. At the next department meeting, scheduled for September 12, this process will be completed and steps for implementation will be taken.
It was also agreed that the program objectives and outcomes should be better aligned with ABET definitions.
4. Dates of Meetings: Please list below the dates of meetings at which the use of assessment results was discussed and also briefly summarize the discussions and decisions.
In the meeting of August 12, it was decided to call an Assessment Retreat on August 22 to complete the work. Several subcommittees were formed to cover different programs. It was also agreed that the Assessment Retreat should be an annual event, generally scheduled on the fourth Friday of each Fall semester, and that FCARs will be due by the second Friday of each semester for the courses taught the previous semester. (The best time to complete them is perhaps when the grades are submitted to the Registrar.)
In the meeting of August 22, four subcommittees met and discussed the various programs as follows:
- Undergraduate CS programs subcommittee
- MSCS subcommittee
- Graduate Certificates in CS subcommittee
- Software Engineering programs subcommittee
Each subcommittee studied the FCARs related to the programs it covered, summarized whether each outcome is met or not, and identified a prioritized list of improvements for further discussion and implementation.
The EPAN vector reflects the number of students that passed the course whose proficiency for that outcome was rated Exemplary, Proficient, Apprentice, or Novice.
Academic Degree Program Assessment (CSE)
