One of the main challenges in all areas of education is to ensure that the academic quality of the teaching – learning process is enhanced continuously. In this work, we present a continuous improvement process based on Deming´s Plan-Do-Check-Act (also known as PDCA) continuous quality improvement model. This model encompasses a one-year cycle, it starts in August and ends in July, in which faculty of the engineering departments participate in the evaluation and collection of evidences of the level of achievement of student´s competences at some specific courses of the academic program curricula every semester. A minimum level of achievement is established by the head of the department which is used as a reference to compare the results obtained at the end of the semester to define whether or not the students accomplished the minimum expected individual level of competence achievement. These results are uploaded into an Administration System for Academic Program Evaluation (SAEP) in which statistics are calculated for all students in a given class. SAEP is an institutional system designed to evaluate student competences defined for all academic programs offered by the university. The faculty must reflect on the results of their classes to identify good practices that must be maintained and areas of opportunity in which he or she must work to improve the results for the following semester. As a result, improvement actions are defined and uploaded into SAEP each semester. At the end of the two-semester cycle a meeting with all faculty of the department is held in which the results of the cycle are presented and discussed. The outcome of the meeting is a list of good practices shared by the faculty and a list of actions for improvement that will be conducted the following cycle. Also, the need for technological or laboratory infrastructure are identified. In addition, a meeting is held with the industry advisory board and employers to present them the results and to ask them for feedback and suggestions to obtain better results the following cycle. This continuous improvement cycle has been highly valuable in national and international accreditation processes of academic engineering programs.
This work provides a framework for universities in regions where accreditation programs are starting and can help the institutions prepare for international accreditation processes such as those demanded by ABET.
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9975-9847
Tecnologico de Monterrey
[biography]
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