Quality Assessment at ENSMM
ENSMM's educational reform organised in year 2000 has been completed by new adaptations and evolutions finalised and organised in the 2004 comeback. The increased diversification of student recruitment as well as important modifications in the environmental context of employment for new engineers makes necessary a regular evaluation of ENSMM's educational programme.
Two types of evaluations are realised:
An internal evaluation by students and professors,
An external evaluation by industrial partners.
Internal evaluation
The educational reform organised in year 2000 introducing the modularisation and the "semestrialisation" modified in an important way the internal structure of the education and its contents. The school followed in a regular way the implementation and the effects of this reform through the Educational Council (Conseil Pédagogique) which is the body of internal consultation at the level of the training and which associates representatives of professors and students. The feedback of information allowed to set up a certain number of adjustments and corrections:
A decrease of the total number of contact-hours,
A better balance between the number of contact hours of different disciplines,
An adjustment of the terms and conditions under which teaching modules are validated and students admitted to the next academic year,
Introduction of new courses related to the evolution of engineering jobs (communication, foreign languages).
During the last few years, ENSMM has broadened the recruitment profile of its students, therefore a very strict monitoring of students' academic results is required. The director of studies is systematically monitoring and analysing students' results, and since 2000, differentiated course contents have been introduced to take into account the different origins of the students. This differentiated education system is continuously refined and improved.
Regular surveys are conducted, for which students give their opinion about proper management of time during their training, about the distribution and coherence of different kinds of courses (lectures, small classes, lab courses). The goal of these surveys is to create a fruitful exchange between the students and the academic staff to support their thoughts about educational questions. The surveys are initiated by professors responsible for 3-rd year options and regular modules.
ENSMM is aware that such kind of survey (for example, a systematic course assessment form to be filled by students at the end of each course or module) allows only a very partial evaluation and might often be subjective. Therefore, ENSMM is also highly interested in the analysis of surveys conducted on ex-students who have found their first job, and tries to check whether complementary courses delivered as early as the first year, in addition to fundamental engineering courses, are actually appropriate, and eventually if their contents has to be adapted.
External evaluation
Since technology evolves very fast in a world-wide job and business context, ENSMM as an engineering school is always questioning whether the delivered courses are appropriate and should be improved. ENSMM has developed a strong partnership with industries in order to get the best possible advice to define its educational policy. The contribution of industrial partners can take the following forms:
Representatives of the socioeconomic world are members of the Board of Administrators (Conseil d'Administration) the definition of strategic objectives of ENSMM for all educational and research questions,
In 2001, ENSMM has created an Educational Advisory Board (Observatoire de la Formation) essentially composed of representatives of partner industrial groups ; the task of this advisory board is to record our partners' educational expectations.
The board has so far listed six educational targets for which a assessment is required:
1) Acquisition of scientific and technical competences,
2) Developing students' abilities to deal with complex technological systems,
3) Basic understanding on how a company works,
4) Developing students' critical mind and innovation capacities,
5) Developing ability to communicate,
6) Developing a mature approach to human relations.
The an assessment survey based on those six topics has yielded the following adaptations and improvements of ENSMM's educational policy:
Increasing Management and Economy themes,
Orientation of End of Studies projects toward the achievement of actual engineering tasks, introducing the ideas of projects and project management reasoning, hence ENSMM has introduced courses to support a project management approach. In this framework, the assessment of the educational choices is made through a series of discussion panels where students and partner companies meet,
Introducing incentive sessions about entrepreneurship.
Quality assessment of the educational programme and assessment of students.
An assessment of the ENSMM-engineer "product" on the job market is directly dependant on the educational profile and on adequate themes and contents of the training courses, in relation with the companies' and employers' expectations, as well as the quality contents and quality assessment of the training.
In order to make progress in this field, the educational advisory board continue to conduct surveys on the proper fit between ENSMM training courses or disciplines, and the current requirements in terms of knowledge acquisition and mastering of concepts and generic tools. According to the results of these surveys,new orientations are decided for each major disciplinary field.
In the same spirit, ENSMM start as of September 2005, for initial studies and continued education, in a quality assessment policy both for analysing education evaluating progress acquired by students. Doing so, problems are identified in the training courses, in the evaluation or in the involvement of students in the educational programme.