Apples and oranges? : a proposed research design to examine the correspondence between two measures of engineering learning

In 2004, ABET commissioned Engineering Change, a study of the impact of Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC2000) on the preparation of undergraduates for careers in engineering. One legacy of that study is a database of EC2000-specific self-reported student learning outcomes at 40 institutions, including precollege characteristics and engineering program outcomes for more than 4,300 graduates of the class of 2004. A second dataset, the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD), compiles institutional data, including demographic and academic transcript records and Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) scores, from nine universities from 1987-2005. In this paper, we propose a design to combine data from the two databases to assess the correspondence between the self-reported student learning outcome measures in the Engineering Change study and the MIDFIELD dataset's information on program-level performance on the FE examination, the only objective test of students’ engineering knowledge.