A Case Study of Continuous Improvement Process in the Department of Civil Engineering at Qassim University

This paper presents a continuous improvement process developed and implemented for the B.Sc. Program in Department of Civil Engineering (DOCE), College of Engineering, Qassim University, Saudi Arabia. The continuous improvement plan is based on an integrated set of strategies aimed at establishing and implementing a structured process that translates educational objectives into measurable outcomes, and specifies feedback tracks for corrective actions. As a result of setting some direct and indirect measures, the program success is assessed and the level of achievement of the educational outcomes is evaluated. This assessment process relates to the personal soft skills as well as the technical knowledge that the students acquire throughout their course of study. The documentation of the continuous improvement process describes two intersecting assessment loops; slow and fast. The slow loop refers to the process by which the program executives examine the achievement of educational outcomes. The fast loop refers to the process by which we assess the degree to which the program graduates achieve the developed program objectives.

The stages of developing and implementing the program educational objectives, outcomes and the assessment plan for the engineering programs are presented. Preliminary results from a pilot implementation are also discussed. Improvements are already evident in the areas of teaching effectiveness, assessment of student learning and involvement of all the constituencies. Based on these procedures, the ABET visit to the DOCE had achieved great success and the program was fully accredited in August 2010. The next visit to the department is going to be in 2016.