Mid-term evaluation of the higher engineering education alliance program (HEEAP)

The principal development intervention employed to achieve HEEAP's goals was annual training sessions on active learning and curriculum design. Three cohorts totaling 123 Vietnamese lecturers were selected to attend a 6-week training program in Arizona each summer from 2010 to 2012. Three related interventions were designed to assist training participants with promoting changes at their home institutions: (1) a faculty reform project conducted by small groups that were formed during the training and completed after the participants returned; (2) a mentoring system established in conjunction with the faculty projects to support the change process HEEAP aimed to achieve at each university; and (3) a component for leadership outreach and socialization to aid institutional reform. A corollary objective of HEEAP was to help Vietnamese institutions advance toward international accreditation through the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). The intent of the evaluation was to produce a forward-looking assessment whose findings and recommendations could be incorporated into follow-on programs. The Scope of Work (SOW) identified three focus areas for evaluation: (1) project achievements -- the success of HEEAP in advancing cutting-edge instruction, providing a relevant and up-to-date curriculum, improving undergraduate learning outcomes, and garnering institutional support for such reforms -- the approach advanced by HEEAP was tightly aligned to the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET); (2) project monitoring evaluation -- how results achieved by the program are seen and measured by program funders and stakeholders and whether or not current project indicators best reflect the performance of the project; and (3) global development alliance -- the contributions of the Global Development Alliance (GDA) structure to program results over and above the results that could have been achieved by USAID funding alone. Specific evaluation findings, conclusions and recommendations are provided with detailed analysis for each evaluation focus area. (Excerpt, modified)