Development of a decision support system to determine engineering student achievement levels based on individual program output during the accreditation process

Abstract

Accreditation studies and the number of programs that are accredited in engineering education are increasing day by day. In the auditing process, under the criteria of program outcomes, the level of individual students' achieving program outcomes is also considered as a sub-criterion. Failure to present a systematic approach to measuring the level of achievement of the program outcomes of the students who have reached the graduation stage in the evaluations or the use of questionnaires to measure them is considered insufficient evidence. In this study, a decision support system based on a multi-criteria decision-making model has been developed to determine the achievement levels of individual program outcomes (PO) of students who have reached the graduation stage of any engineering program. The MOORA (Multi- Objective Optimization on the basis of Ratio Analysis) method was used as a multi-criteria decision-making model, and the provision levels of POs were graded. In this way, the required evidence is created automatically by calculating the PO provision levels according to the compulsory and elective courses taken by the students at the graduation stage throughout their education life. We aimed to prevent the observed deficiencies and to set an example for the programs that will work the process. We developed a decision support system that can be used by engineering programs to determine whether their program satisfies accreditation requirements.