Educational program evaluations: rationalizing assessment models and processes for engineering education quality enhancement

International audienceIn engineering education, several reference models of quality are defined by accreditation bodies or quality assurance organisations, at national and international levels. With approaches based on standards, they favour transparency and benchmarking of programs, in line with accountability issues. Quality assessors and program managers have to juggle with such models: grasp all - lose all. As shown by several accreditation system updated requirements, to support continuous improvements in the field of engineering education, reference models to align with tend now to be complemented by assessment models and processes. However, more closer to recommendations or good practices to follow, managing the quality enhancement of an engineering higher education institution still often remains practically informal and subjective. To cope with such challenge, the main contribution of this paper is to analyse three quality frameworks (CDIO, EFQM, and ISO-SPICE) and compare them in the context of quality enhancement. By analysing their respective reference models and assessment processes, it permits to sketch the broad lines of a multimodal and adaptive system to flexibly manage quality in engineering education. This paper will permit readers (i) to identify the strengths and weaknesses of different models for engineering education quality assessment, (ii) to benefit from a global comparison of assessment models and processes and (iii) to grasp an overview of some possible ways of improvement of the CDIO self-assessment approach