Assessment of Two Engineering Courses in Architectural Engineering Program in UAE University Based on the Comparison of the Students Results with the Students and the Instructors Opinions

Abstract

The present study examined the level of outcome satisfaction of two main engineering courses taken by students in the Architectural Engineering department (AE) by evaluating the students’ satisfaction result (SR), the attained level of the students’ opinions (SO), and the instructors’ opinions (IO). The AE program in United Arab Emirates University is one of the departments in the College of Engineering accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET which provides assurance that a College or University program meets the quality standards of the profession for which that program prepares graduates. The AE program offers a wide range of engineering courses at different levels from sophomore level to senior level. All the engineering courses are mainly prerequisites to the Capstone Engineering Design Project which builds on the outcomes of all courses to perform detailed design and cost estimates of the selected alternative solutions to a well-defined engineering problem. The two courses considered in this study are Building Electrical Circuits and Building Acoustics and Lighting. New assessment parameters which are the student course outcome satisfaction coefficient (SCOSC) and the mean absolute deviation around a central point (AMD) have been introduced in this paper. These two parameters are calculated based on the comparison of the students’ satisfaction results with both students’ opinions and insructors’ opinions, and compare the mean absolute deviations of the students’ direct results with the students’ opinions and the instructors’ opinions, respectively. Indeed, the course learning outcomes (CLOs) of the SR of some sections for both courses show higher attainment compared with the SO and IO.