1.

Background

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology is an undergraduate science and engineering institution although we have an active master’s level graduate program in many areas. The Department of Physics and Optical Engineering offers a B. S. degree in Optical Engineering, B. S. degree in Engineering Physics, B. S. degree in Physics, and a M. S. degree in Optical Engineering. The optics program at Rose-Hulman was initiated in 1983, and realizing the importance of optical measurement and testing, courses such as Optical Instrumentation as well as testing and Fiber Optics and Application were incorporated. These courses address some aspects of measurement and testing. However, to enrich the Applied Optics curriculum, many new courses have been introduced such as: Applied Optics Projects Lab I, Applied Optics Projects Lab II, Optical Metrology, Semiconductor Materials, and Micro-sensors. Further, certificates in semiconductor materials and devices as well as image processing enables the student to expand their background by studying these diverse topics.

The multidisciplinary field of optics in the undergraduate curriculum is facing revolutionary changes, as optical techniques become the standard tools for industrial inspection and as optical components become standard items in consumer products. As educators, we are faced with a task of designing a curriculum to meet the growing needs of the market trend. This requires the need to improve the curriculum from the traditional science course sequence and match the need for more applied and engineering nature of the courses. With this transition we initiated the process of seeking accreditation for this optical engineering program through the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). Presently the University of Alabama and University of Arizona are the only two schools that have ABET accredited programs in optical engineering. The intent of the optical engineering program at Rose-Hulman is to prepare students for the practice of engineering at a professional level. This program is not intended as a supporting role in optical engineering but provides the basic practices of optical engineering supported by a strong group of faculty expertise in the area.

This paper describes one assessment component of the accreditation process called curriculum mapping. This mapping is used to determine how well the contents of our courses match the overall educational and learning outcome of our program.

2.

Educational outcomes and objectives

Optics education in the undergraduate curriculum is multidisciplinary and involves a strong engineering aspect. Curriculum changes should focus, among others, on the overall outcome, which force educators to charter the delivery of the subject information at the appropriate time in the course sequence. We are faced with the task of designing a curriculum to meet not only the growing needs of market trend but also to make the students learn the essentials. Students need to gain knowledge in a broad range of fields from pure physics to almost every discipline of engineering but appropriately staggered by designing courses that have specific outcomes. This should not essentially be focused on the methodology of teaching but on a broader level of evenly distributed but reinforced learning styles for the students. This task is significantly difficult in the optics curriculum because optics courses are usually a blend of new technology, engineering and physics. At Rose-Hulman, this concept has geared us to evaluate the traditional course sequence in courses with laboratory in terms of information content and student outcomes. Overall, laboratory experiments are designed to reinforce concepts for understanding the basic scientific ideas of a particular course along with the necessary experimental skills. RHIT’s optics program has evolved gradually to mix the two worlds with the introduction of project-based courses that awaken the scientific curiosity as well as the engineering creativity. There has also been a focus to enable the students to employ their optics and scientific knowledge to build products as well. We have been in a process of constantly restructuring the program to meet the challenges of tomorrow by carefully assessing the needs of the students, the engineering community and the market place.

The OE program educational subcategorized goals/outcomes are:

Goal A: Knowledge of the Fundamentals: An understanding of the fundamentals of science and engineering

Goal B1: Interpreting Data: Ability to interpret graphical, numerical, and textual data.

Goal B2: System Level Modeling: Ability to model components and system optical engineering problems.

Goal B3: Experimentation: Ability to design and conduct experiments to understand the relationships between variables in a problem which may or may not have been mathematically modeled before.

Goal C: Design: Ability to design a product or process to satisfy client’s needs subject to constraints

Goal D: Team work and Deliverables: Ability to work in multi-disciplinary teams and to understand the effective team dynamics and be able to deliver a product.

Goal E: Problem Solving: Ability to apply relevant scientific and engineering principles to solve real world optical engineering problems.

Goal F: Professional Practice and Ethics: A sound understanding of what an optics professional is and have an awareness and understanding of professional ethics.

Goal G: Communication: Ability to communicate effectively in oral, written, and visual forms.

Goals H, J: Contemporary issues, non-technical issues, global awareness: An awareness of contemporary and non-technical issues in the engineering profession and the role of professionals in an interdependent global society.

Goal I: Independent Learning: A facility for independent learning and continued professional development.

The first educational outcome, the knowledge of fundamentals, relies on several important aspects of optics where the students should have basic knowledge to be able to suit them as optical engineers. For example, Goal A is categorized into three major outcomes on basic science, mathematics, engineering, and foundation of optical engineering. In the foundations of optical engineering we have 10 major divisions than students need to fulfill to succeed as optical engineers. Each of the goals from A to I have gone through several review with the advice of several constituencies and were tied to the RHIT and ABET learning outcomes [1,2]. Table 1 shows how the OE program outcomes are consistent with the requirements of ABET.

Table 1:

Correlation between OE Outcome to ABET ‘a’ through ‘k’ criteria

3.

Curriculum mapping as assessment tool

In order to evaluate and assess the OE program as how well it is targeted to the outcomes set by the department faculty, advisory board, external industrial client a departmental committee was created and surveys completed. The main task of this committee is also to review the criteria for optical engineering education every year. This committee looks at the assessment results from several sources using concept inventory, RHIT e-portfolio, and curriculum mapping to make recommendation for faculty to modify and alter subject material content and delivery. Additionally, student end-of-the-quarter evaluations give several indications on the subject content and delivery as well. The laboratory reports are surveyed each year by a group of faculty to assess the overall performance of the students. There questionnaires are filled out by faculty every year by looking at the laboratory report of students. All the OE classes have laboratory activities associated with them and several faculty use a standard rubrics for laboratory grading providing a consistent approach to the students.

The optical engineering curriculum is shown in Appendix A. The student needs to have a total of 194 credits to graduate with the optical engineering degree. The courses that are bolded are optical engineering classes where faculty members fill a departmental curriculum mapping every quarter at the end of the class. Faculty members also write a short summary of the improvements and difficulties in the class.

Figure 1 shows the flow chart of the review process used in the overall assessment and refinement process for the OE program. Every quarter before the beginning of the quarter faculty members review the comments made by faculty in the curriculum mapping, the concept inventory test from the class that is administered during the fist week and the ABET files from the previous year. The curriculum committee reviews, on a bi-weekly basis, the developments in the curriculum mapping of the department. At the end of the quarter the committee reviews the improvements made and chooses certain goals to be assessed in order to observe if the educational outcomes are being met. Every year in the department advisory board meeting which consists of industrial and educational leaders make recommendations based on the report submitted to them on the curriculum assessment. They also make recommendations on the goals and outcomes of the OE program. During the annual departmental conclave the recommendation of the board, the curriculum assessment data, and the faculty quarterly reports on courses are collected and certain goals and outcomes are chosen for the following year to be assessed. On a yearly basis, the data from concept inventory, lab assessment matrix, alumni survey, student survey, and the course reviews are looked at to make appropriate changes for the measurement rubrics and to make appropriate curriculum changes. On a three year cycle the department reviews the goals and Outcome of the OE program with the trends in technology, trends in teaching tools, and all surveys for making appropriate changes. This process ensures that several aspects of the curriculum are in place and being assessed and improved in a consistent and regular basis.

Figure 1.

Optical Engineering Curriculum Review and Assessment

In the process of setting up the assessment and evaluation of the OE program the first steps taken in the department was to set-up a method of mapping all the course goals and Outcome to the overall program goals and Outcome. To accomplish this task an Excel spread sheet was developed where each course had a listing of all the educational Outcome of the program and as faculty at the end of the quarter determine what outcomes were met in a particular course they have taught. In a column to the right of the outcomes, faculty marks an ‘x’ meaning that that particular outcome was covered in class. Further, this is also cross checked with the course example materials submitted. Table 2 shows part of the spread sheet used for mapping the goals of Optical Systems OE295.

Table 2.

Example of the curriculum mapping for OE495 Optical Metrology filled in by the faculty Additionally, in the process of redesigning the curriculum, it was realized that the students were lacking of learning about numerical and statistical analysis. In the initial design of the curriculum it was decided by the faculty that statistical methods would be covered in the laboratory section of every OE class. As such almost all the courses that are OE courses are laboratory intensive. Assuming that during the process of collecting data, that is random in nature, faculty will teach the technique of applying appropriate statistical tools to address the randomness of the data. Both the senior survey along with curriculum mapping showed the lack of competency gained in this area. Consequently, the department added the course MA225 Statistical and Numerical Methods as a required course. Furthermore, the curriculum mapping is used as a cross checking method that ABET committee reviews every year to get a better picture of the overall performance of students in the OE program.

In the first trial run it was found that the OE curriculum was very strong in delivering the fundamentals but received a poor rating on ethics and communication. Additionally, it was also reflected from the initial trial run of the curriculum mapping a course on optical systems needed to be included at the end of the sophomore year to capture the ever growing demand on the systems approach. For example in the column for OE 495 on the knowledge of fundamentals only 10 out of the 12 outcomes were met can be seen in table 3. Additionally in communication one can see that only one out of the possible five outcomes was being met in almost all the classes. Upon serious review, faculty emphasis on communication in their classes has lead to getting a better distribution of four out of the five outcomes as is evident from table 4.

Table 3:

Aggregate data for the OE program in 2002-03

Table 4:

Aggregate data of how many times a certain outcome in the OE program was met in 2003-04

The curriculum mapping tracks the individual goals and outcomes of courses to the overall goals and outcomes of the OE program. In the continual improvement and evolution of the program courses were gradually introduced and modified. An example of that is the implementation of the three quarter capstone design classes in 2004-05. Several laboratory changes are being made to strengthen the experimentation and design aspects of the learning of the students. A grading rubric has evolved from the early days of the Optics program and is now used as a standard method of grading in several of the OE classes. Additionally the problem solving ability of the student is rigorously being tested in all the classes. Upon graduation optical engineering students must be able to know the fundamentals concepts of optics and be able to determine its appropriate use and apply them in the area of design and testing. Additionally, faculty improvements made during a course of a class is also captured in the curriculum mapping. Table 5 shows mapping comments for OE415, OE393, and OE295. The following are the list of assessment tools used in evaluating the program: faculty input, curriculum mapping, e-portfolio, senior and junior survey, concept inventory, departmental rating, OE departmental committee, yearly review, advisory board, alumni survey, industrial client survey, and dashboard indicators.

Table 5:

Example of comments made in the curriculum mapping 2003-04

4.

Conclusion

The optical engineering program will pursue ABET accreditation in 2006-07 academic year. This year is the third cycle for doing curriculum mapping for the optical engineering program. The overall benefit of the curriculum mapping has been to determine the overall educational outcome on a snap shot for the whole program. The snap shot profile has helped identify deficiencies and weakness of the program. For example, after the first cycle, the snap shot profile revealed that students were not being exposed enough to Team Work and Professional Ethics as it could not be covered in a one quarter project course. The one quarter project course starts with a statement of work where students have to deliver a prototype in three months. Consequently because of the stringent requirement on the deliverables, there was no time available to teach explicitly ethics and team work even though the students were practicing it in their work. Therefore, we decided to expand the design course to a full year sequence of three courses where the students were explicitly exposed to analyzing the code of ethics for optical engineers, doing a case study, and developing teaming skills. The next cycle of curriculum mapping showed a dramatic change in these two categories strengthening the program in these areas. Secondly, statistical analysis of data was being taught in the labs but did not show explicitly in the curriculum mapping. So upon reviewing the second cycle of the curriculum mapping it was decided to introduce a new course on statistics as a requirement for graduation. Additionally curriculum mapping also provides a continual refinement of courses as an instructor teaches it from year to year and also provides continuity from one instructor to another.