ABET Program Certification
HCI 551 Project 2

download Project Documentation (.pdf)

The system requirements are largely dependent on the certification requirements that ABET has for candidate programs. In order for a candidate program to become ABET certified it must satisfy a number of eleven identified guidelines. The proposed goals of the guidelines rarely changes, but may be adjusted in the future nonetheless. Candidate degree programs must consist of a set of objectives, which fulfill one or more of these ABET guidelines. In turn, for a student to graduate from a ABET certified program, it is necessary for the student to adhere to and complete the degree program objectives that fulfill all ABET guidelines.

Since the degree program objectives are currently not well-formed and still under review it is necessary for the proposed certification review website (which is the subject of this project) to allow faculty to adjust the program objectives, as well as, the ABET guidelines they fulfill. Also, the system must make available the ability to maintain records of which students have fulfilled which degree objectives. The fulfillment of the degree objective can either occur by a student completing a course (that fulfills the degree objective) with a passing grade (corresponding to a letter grading rubric), by showing proof that knowledge in this degree objective is sufficient (pass/fail grading rubric) or by some artifact of completed work, such as a paper, independent study, project or the like (corresponding to an artifact grading rubric).

It hence becomes clear that the system must be designed as a raw framework, in which ABET guidelines, degree program objectives, grading rubrics, and students can be added and removed, altered or changed dynamically. The interaction with the website must therefore be designed accordingly.

From these requirements, the question arises, why the system cannot be designed as a desktop application. The main goal of this project is to develop a central point where degree program faculty and ABET certification authorities can monitor the certification requirements of the degree program and students can monitor their personal degree progress, therefore, a downloadable and deployable desktop application poses problems that must first be addressed.

First, communication with a database must conform to certain security standards – a necessity that can be addressed in a website paradigm, as the web server will be the only trusted node to access a database. Authentication can therefore be performed on a per-user basis rather than on a per-machine and per-user basis, as it would be in a desktop application. Furthermore, ABET certification officers will need a quick and easy way to access the data and review the certification process; deploying a desktop application for that purpose is posing integration issues with a potential significantly differing platform and would hinder an easy interaction.