Abstract
This study provides a broad overview of the standardization process for a Cooperative Program (COP) through a case study in an industrial engineering (IE) department at a public university in Saudi Arabia. This study aims to investigate a systematic and consistent approach for developing, implementing, and measuring outcomes of COP policy and procedures. To this end, this study presents the process used to develop a Cooperative Program Handbook (COPH) using a standardization process model. The developed COPH includes all of the requirements, standardized process flows, expected deliverables, assessment of COP learning outcomes, mapping with ABET Student Outcomes (SOs), and continuous improvements for the COP experience. The COPH was implemented for two consecutive academic years, 2019 and 2020, in the industrial engineering undergraduate program of a public university in Saudi Arabia, in order to measure students' attainment of ABET SOs 3, 4, 5, and 7. As a result, the proposed model was successfully implemented and showed improvements and lessons learned relating to student attainment at each SO for the COP over the two academic years of implementation. The results show that the average achievement of SOs was 86.27% for direct assessment and 79.34% for indirect assessment. Afterwards, a questionnaire was conducted on 157 stakeholders to measure their satisfaction with the proposed approach. The results showed that the average overall weighted level of stakeholder satisfaction was 76.83%. It was observed that COP goals, stakeholders' roles and responsibilities, COP process flows and requirements, evaluation and assessment methods, and COP learning outcomes had a high impact on stakeholder satisfaction. Although the focus of this study was on an undergraduate engineering program in Saudi Arabia, the insights of measuring ABET SOs through this approach are quite generic and can be applied to other engineering schools beyond Saudi Arabia.