LEVERAGING CLOUD-BASED SERVICES AND TOOLS FOR CURRICULUM AND ENGINEERING ATTRIBUTES MANAGEMENT
Guy Bégin · Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) · 2013
Canadian engineering schools must make the transition to outcome-based programming, assessment, and accreditation. The task can be daunting, especially for small schools or programs that cannot rely on extensive information technology support. Cloud-based services are a quick, low-cost option for facilitating many data-management and collaborative tasks required by the process. Cloud services have evolved from mere on-line storage to the "software as a service" paradigm. We report our experience with two services that facilitate collaborative work. Using on-line, specially crafted questionnaires, information may be automatically collected and formatted into spreadsheets, providing a powerful, general purpose data collection engine. This approach was used at various stages in the transition to graduate attributes processing: curriculum mapping, assessment, etc. On-line services have also been used to create a distributed repository of relevant literature for supporting the work of the “attributes”team.