Continual Improvement Process (CIP)

Continual Improvement Process

Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta

It behooves the Educational institutions to be constantly morphing and adapting themselves to societal changes. To that effect, adopting a continual improvement process (CIP) can provide means for gradual improvement of the institution’s systems or upgrading all at the same time.The CIP is felicitously defined by W. Edwards Deming, as a part of the system where organizational goals are assessed regarding the feedbacks from the process and customers. According to the institute of quality assurance, CIP is overtime and endless change with an emphasis on the efficiency of the organization to satisfy its goals and policies. The purpose of CIP is the recognition and lessening of substandard processes with a focus on incremental and persistent steps rather than massive jumps [1].

Each engineering program requires a CIP in order to assure that it stays relevant to the current trends, and its graduates attain knowledge and skills necessary for the evolving job-market. Also, the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) mandates that each program develops and maintains a CIP that is based on consultation with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders. The CIP process should have conspicuous steps for improvement with a clear timetable. Additionally, CEAB defines twelve key graduate attributes (GAs) that a recent graduate needs to possess upon graduation. Assessing the GAs of graduates not only affirm that program goals are met but also generate essential data that provides essential feedback for the CIP process. Assessing the GAs can be performed utilizing activity-specific assessment surveys addressing one or more indicators for each attribute, student’s self-assessment or third party reviews. Finally, according to CEAB, each program should provide evidence that the CIP has resulted in enhancement of GAs achievement and/or advances in assessment process [2].

The office of the associate chair of undergraduate studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alberta (UofA) developed a CIP that is tailored towards the Civil Engineering Program. Central to the process is a curriculum review committee (CRC) that is responsible, under the direction of the associate chair of undergraduate studies, and based on three different channels of input, for proposing updates to the curriculum in the form of renewed curriculum maps, reassessed learning outcomes, and the associated calendar description. The first channel of input is through the GAs assessment tools. The second is through the post-course assessment feedback provided by the professors and the feedback from Engg 400. The first two channels are reviewed and analyzed on an annual basis. The third channel is through stakeholders surveys that are conducted every two years. The stakeholders are identified as recent graduates, industry leading professionals, and professors within the department and considering six technical areas of Civil Engineering as shown in Figure 1.

Fig 1: CIP developed by the office of the associate chair of undergraduate studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

All collected input data will be housed and analyzed by a postdoctoral fellow at the office of the associate chair of undergrad studies. The analysis will aim to ensure that the curriculum content and associated GAs assessment are relevant to the skills required by the graduates as identified by the various stakeholders. The GAs assessment will follow the commonly approach of utilizing the 4-tiered rubrics [3, 4]. This includes defining a numerical value between 1 to 4 representing the 4-scales of rubrics, including unsatisfactory, marginal, meets expectations, and exceeds expectations for each graduate attribute indicator. The percentage of each indicator regarding these four scales will be calculated. A target threshold as an intended level of proficiency and a limit as the minimum acceptable level of performance for each indicator will be defined. Indicators with the cumulative percentage below the threshold demonstrate the need for improvement in that particular GA. Process of data collection and program improvement will be continued to assure that all graduates of the civil engineering program are equipped with state of the art knowledge and expertise. 

References:

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continual_improvement_process

2- Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB). (2018). Accreditation Criteria and Procedures. CEAB, Ottawa, Ontario.

3- Easa, S. M. (2013). Framework and guidelines for graduate attribute assessment in engineering education. Canadian journal of civil engineering, 40(6), 547-556.

4- Spracklin-Reid, D., & Fisher, A. (2014). Curriculum mapping in engineering education: Linking attributes, outcomes and assessments. Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA).