Summary and Analysis of the Data

It is obvious that our graduating students of 2006-2007 scored better, on average, in all six aspects.

With regard to analyzing the data among the two options in the CS program, Cooperative work option and the summer training option, in the 2006-2007 survey, it is obvious that students with the summer training options felt more technically capable than those of the Coop option. On the other hand, Coop students felt more confident and capable than summer training students with respect to most soft skills. The reason for this is that the COOP experience of some students is not as rich, technically, as it should be, especially when the employers fail to assign worthy projects to the students. It is true that the department ensures that each student carries out a project during his COOP, it may be that the students do not put their hearts into the assigned projects, as they feel they are alien to the working environment they are in. However, COOP students through a 7-month work experience master a lot of soft skills that summer training students may not do, during their 8-week summer training period.

With regard to the overall results, we notice a slight lack of "Safety Awareness" by our graduates since it scored less than 2.5. Another issue is that of counseling and advising services. It is worth mentioning, though, that the university adopted new registration procedures starting 062 by which students cannot complete their early registration before meeting the advisor and discussing their progress towards their degrees. We, therefore, believe that in the next three years, this issue will be resolved and the graduating students will reflect that in the survey. As a department, we cannot comment much on "Food services", "Safety and security services", and "recreation facilities". However, with respect to "Parking services", which got an average below 2.0, it is, in our opinion, a direct consequence of the fact that students do not have access to "covered" parking spaces, especially that temperatures average above 35 Celsius for more than five months per year.

Regarding the employer surveys, Most of the questions are similar in the 2002-2003 and 2006-2007 surveys. Below is the table showing the common questions among the two surveys, followed by comparing the average responses of both surveys:

The only values that went below 2.5 are Question 9: "Presentation Capabilities" and Question 20: "Safety Awareness". With regard to presentation capabilities, the department is vigorously instilling presentation tasks in many junior and senior level courses. In addition, the English Language Center has been contacted regarding this issue. As for safety awareness, this may not be of direct impact on Computer Science graduates.

In the 2006-2007 Alumni survey, we differentiate between 2005-2006 graduates and previous graduates. Looking into the figures below, we notice the following:

One tool of assessment that has been introduced in the academic year 2006-2007 based on the recommendations of the University's ABET steering committee is the use of soliciting students' input on the coverage of the learning outcomes of core courses while taking those courses. For each course, assessment of the course learning outcomes, in addition to input concerning how to improve the course offerings were solicited. Each course learning outcome has been mapped to one program outcome. The only exceptions to this include ICS 351, the coop training course, ICS 411, the senior project course, ICS 309, the Computing and Society course, and ICS 399, the summer training course. For ICS 351 and ICS 411, a course learning outcome may map to more than one program outcome. ICS 399 was not assessed in 2005-2006 as it was prior to the introduction of this way of assessment. ICS 309 in 062 was not assessed by its instructor. However, it does not affect the assessment much as its outcomes are covered in other courses. The survey students were asked to fill had the following format for each course learning outcome: "After taking this course, I am able to ....." with five options: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree. Each of these options was given a weight, from 4 down to zero. The reason for using this scale is to compare it to the direct assessment results as shown in the next section. The number of responses for each category was counted and a corresponding weighted average was computed for each course learning outcome. These outcome values were used to produce the level of achievement of each program outcome corresponding to their mappings. Detailed results for each course can be found in their corresponding course assessment report that will be available in the course display. The following tables show the mapping between course learning outcomes and program outcomes for 061 and 062, respectively.

There are two reasons for including two tables. The first one is that some courses have fine tuned their course learning outcomes and hence the mapping changed, e.g., ICS 102, ICS 251, ICS 252, etc. Another reason is the introduction of new courses, e.g. ICS 233, and the renumbering of courses in the new program, e.g. ICS 334 in 061 is the same as ICS 324 in 062. The details of these changes are listed under the "Program assessment and improvement history" section in this document. In order to assess the achievement of program outcomes, seven area groups were formed in order to provide feedback on the importance and quantity of contribution of each course outcome to its corresponding program outcome. The seven area groups are as follows:

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  Programming Principles (ICS 102, ICS 201)
  
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  Computer Science Foundations (ICS 251, ICS 252, ICS 253, ICS 254, ICS 313, ICS 410)
  
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  Data Structures and Algorithms (ICS 202, ICS 353)
  
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  Software Engineering (ICS 351, SWE 311, ICS 413, ICS 411)
  
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  Systems and Applications (ICS 334, ICS 324, ICS 381, ICS 432, ICS 343, ICS 431)
  
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  Hardware (ICS 233)
  
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  Computing and Society (ICS 309)