Modelling competency standards to facilitate accreditation: A pathways perspective

Abstract

Accreditation forms the basis of many professional societies, with members able to present themselves as competent to provide a range of services. Within Engineering in Australia, there is growing interest in developing formalized processes with international recognition. Current interest in accreditation management includes development of a methodology to map between curricula of engineering programs and the appropriate competency standards, as well as assessment of the education and experience of those not undertaking accredited programs. An additional incentive is the increase in diversity of education pathways into the engineering workforce, which need to be assessed. This paper focuses on the achievement of Engineers Australia’s Stage 1 Competency as a Professional Engineer. The goal of the paper is to offer a proposal for a process that can be used to document and analyse complex competency frameworks. We show that the modelling process can identify whether the assessed elements are sufficient to achieve accredited status or highlight areas requiring further development. The value of this work is the relative ease with which a program or a person may be assessed against the competency standard, once a suitable model has been developed