The CEAB accreditation requirement of graduate attributes and continual improvement processes (GACIP) has been a pervasive topic in the annual CEEA conference proceedings since 2010. The proceedings are a rich primary source of work being done in Canadian tertiary institutions. This narrative review of the literature consolidates and discusses the relevant CEEA papers for 2010-2017 in a manner that is useful to leadership and decision-makers at accredited faculties of Engineering nationwide.
Four guiding research questions were asked of this literature: (1) What general frameworks are being implemented as accredited faculties of Engineering across Canada approach GACIP?; (2) What are the specific activities and methods of one or more of the GACIP steps?; (3) What are the roles and responsibilities of people involved?; and (4) What perspectives are taken in response to the CEAB accreditation criteria, including concerns, issues, and benefits? A qualitative content analysis was conducted on 106 papers meeting selection criteria. Emergent topics were used to form the discussion.

https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/PCEEA/article/download/13736/9070

Approaches to graduate attributes and continual improvement processes in faculties of engineering across canada: a narrative review of the literature

The recently introduced Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) requirements for Graduate Attributes [1] require demonstrated learning outcomes for the first time. CDIO has required outcomes and benchmarking for more than a decade, and the CDIO Syllabus [2] has provided a detailed and proven framework within which to organize the topics covered by those outcomes. The latest revision of the syllabus informs many of our programs, and can provide the detail on how we can document a set of outcomes that meet the more general requirements of the CEAB Graduate Attributes. This paper provides a framework for Canadian engineering programs to satisfy CEAB requirements through a mapping of the CDIO Syllabus topics to the CEAB Attributes, and verification of the completeness of that list. An engineering program can meet all of the CEAB Graduate Attribute requirements by addressing a subset of the CDIO Syllabus, however a CEAB accredited program may not meet all of the requirements of CDIO.

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Mapping the relationship between the cdio syllabus and the ceab graduate attributes: an update

New institutionalism predicts a global convergence in how higher education is organized. This convergence might be expected to intensify in professional education given accreditation requirements of professional bodies. Engineering presents an opportunity to study how international mobility agreements facilitate the development and normative diffusion of global norms in accreditation. This paper investigates how changing logics of accreditation influence the academic organization of engineering schools in Canada. Using three case studies of Canadian universities, we show how regulative and normative institutional pressures influence decisions by engineering schools to take visible action to demonstrate their conformity to global norms, while still pursuing local missions. Our findings contribute to understanding the complex mediation processes between professions and universities, and they represent a critique to dominant rationalist perspectives on quality assurance mechanisms in higher education.

Do global norms matter? The new logics of engineering accreditation in Canadian universities

This paper describes and compares the different approaches of seven Canadian institutions to the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) requirements for continuous quality improvement using graduate attributes. Program approaches are compared by: program objectives & management, indicators, curriculum mapping, assessment & data collection and curriculum improvement. The significant differences include approaches to curriculum mapping, data collection and curriculum improvement.

https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/PCEEA/article/download/4642/4624

A Comparison of Institutional Approaches to CEAB Graduate Attribute Requirements

As the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Manitoba begins to emphasize outcome based teaching and assessment along with the traditional input-based teaching and assessment, data are being collected in a variety of forms. Some of the indirect data being gathered comes from students in the form of the Student Exit Survey. This survey was developed to measure students’ perception of how well their program prepared them with regards to the CEAB twelve graduate attributes. The survey asked students to consider a large number of indicators for each of the graduate attributes.The indicator list was originally constructed with the intention of sufficiently defining each attribute for the five engineering programs in the faculty while providing variety and choice. Therefore, the list was fairly extensive, and at times iterative and unwieldy. When revisiting the original Student Exit Survey, two factors ascended in importance: student feedback on their personal attribute competencies as developed within their program, and how to define attribute competency levels.To establish competency levels and make indicators more manageable for faculty and students, the indicators for each attribute were revised to reflect the six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in the Cognitive Domain: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. This new attribute/indicator format was then developed into theStudent Exit Survey and given to fourth year Mechanical engineering students in Fall 2012. This paper describes that effort and analyzes the initial data from this first pass. This data will be used to inform the continued revision of the Student Exit Survey until it is a reliable and valid instrument for providing feedback at instructor, program and faculty levels as the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Engineering forges ahead with its continual cycle of improvement.

https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/PCEEA/article/download/4857/4804

Surveying fourth year engineering student perceptions of graduate attribute competencies

This paper describes the objectives and progress of the Engineering Graduate Attribute Development (EGAD) project. This is a Canadian collaborative project sponsored by the National Council of Deans of Engineering and Applied Science (NCDEAS), in collaboration with Engineers Canada. EGAD's mandate is to develop resources and training for assessing graduating student attributes in undergraduate engineering programs for the purpose of improving the quality of engineering education in Canada, specifically in response to CEAB's graduate attribute requirements.

https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/PCEEA/article/download/3566/3581

Peter Wolf

Papers

Engineering Graduate Attribute Development (EGAD) Project