The Benefits of CDIO for ABET Preparation from a Hands-on Study in Vietnam

Following our previous paper in the International CDIO Conference of 2013 about the adoption of CDIO as the basis for international accreditations in Vietnam, our paper this year will focus on the analysis of where and how CDIO may benefit the most in the preparatory efforts for ABET accreditation. Using the data and assessments being prepared at Duy Tan University for ABET, the paper affirmed that previous adoption of CDIO at Duy Tan University has become very beneficial for ABET accreditation in a number of areas:

First of all, for the ABET's alignment requirement amongst "Mission - Vision - Educational Objectives - Program Outcomes", the CDIO framework had provided very structured ways to deduct program outcomes from various educational objectives within the scope of its Standard No. 1 (The Context) and 2 (Learning Outcomes). Secondly, CDIO is essential in helping us meet most of the requirements of ABET's criteria about Students (ABET Criterion No. 1), Program Outcomes (ABET Criterion No. 3), and Continuous Improvement (ABET Criterion No. 4). A "red flag" system for continuous improvement was actually developed by DTU based on the rubrics of CDIO Standard No. 3 (Integrated Curriculum), 10 (Enhancement of Faculty Teaching Competence), 11 (Learning Assessment) and 12 (Program Evaluation) so as to help indicate when, where and what we may need improvement on to meet certain requirements of ABET. Thirdly, the emphasis of CDIO on industry's involvement in curriculum development has given us good advice on how to set up and organize our Department Advisory Board for ABET. Fourthly, CDIO is especially helpful in measuring our levels of satisfaction for certain requirements and criteria of ABET. As a matter of fact, ABET accreditation are mostly based on relative assessment rather than some quantitative measurement scale, hence, it is sometimes difficult to determine how much more we need to try for to achieve certain levels of satisfaction. A number of direct and indirect assessment rubrics derived from the CDIO Framework such as English Writing rubric, Oral Presentation rubric, Teamwork rubric, Exit Survey, Employer Survey, etc. are quite useful in measuring our level of satisfaction for different ABET requirements. Last but not least, by following structured practices in assessment and documentation for CDIO, we are very much already done with certain documentation for ABET. One typical instance has to do with the student’s portfolio, which would have become disastrous if we had not stored all the students’ records following CDIO’s instructions.

While the CDIO framework may not help solve all the problems posed by ABET, our experiences certainly show that it come quite close to meeting most of our essential requirements for ABET preparation. Thus, it may arguably be said that the CDIO framework is the best tool for ABET preparation.

Proceedings of the 10th International CDIO Conference, Barcelona, Spain, June 15-19 2014