UCSC CE and EE Departments' fulfillment of ABET Outcome D

Engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams.

These courses help fulfill this ABET outcome (as determined by Ken Pedrotti and Claire Gu):

1. CE118 via all Core Labs
2. CE155 via Skill 3 discussed
3. CS185 via Core Topic 11
4. CS115 Skills 1, 2, and 6 and Core Topics 2, 4, 6, and 7
5. CS116 via Skills 1 through 3, Core Topics 1, 3, 5, 6, and Core Lab Exercise 1
6. EE80T via Skill 11
7. EE125 via Skill 1 and Core Topic 2
8. EE127 via Skills 4 and 5 and Core Topic 3
9. EE128 via Skills 3, 4, and Core Topics 3 and 4.
10. EE129 (at SJSU) via Skill 13

In the following section, representatives from each department talk about how their students fulfill this component, how it is monitored, and what the feedback loops are.

1. The CE department on monitoring and feedback
   1. The initial take (as written by anujan Varma)
      The CE department tests this outcome via the CE Portfolio requirement, which has allowed us to judge the body of student designs and to address design course trends and needs.
   2. Final metric and feedback as determined by the Oversight committee

      Our three metrics are:

      1. Quantitative:123B projects: 70% of the projects must have members from more than one program, and 90% of the projects must have members from more than one program concentration.
      2. Quantitative:The Senior Portfolio: 100% of each year's portfolios must describe multi-disciplinary team experiences.
      3. Subjective:The exit survey results on Questions 5 and 9: An average of 4 out of 5 must be maintained.
      If any of the three of these is not met, the oversight committee must propose changes to the faculty and the advisory counsil.

    

2. The EE department's monitoring and feedback (as written by Ken Pedrotti)
   Throughout many of our upper division courses and in EE70, students are encouraged to work in collaborative groups on homework and lab assignments. These early experiences are then called upon in the capstone design courses (EE125 & EE126 and EE127 & EE128) in which designs are approached by teams in a more formally organized context typical of engineering development projects. This includes the application of principles of interactive project management and teamwork in an engineering design including division of project accountability, project management and peer design reviews. We measure the multidisciplinary team experience in several ways. First, a survey midway through the course; second a survey at the end of the course and finally peer reviews within each team as well as reviews of each team by the project leader and the instructor at the end of the course. Very short term feedback is provided by mentoring of the teams in action as done by the project leaders and the instructor. Additional effectiveness in teaching the skills necessary to function in multi-diciplinary teams is evaluated by the end-of-course student evaluations (short term), the EE graduation exit survey (medium term) and alumni survey (Long term). Since the capstone design courses typically occur at the end of a students tenure as an undergraduate, entrance surveys and tests in subsequent courses are not effective methods of monitoring this outcome.