فصلنامه آموزش مهندسی ایران
پیاپی 71 (پاییز 1395)

Although education in materials engineering is a part of the engineering education system, it needs an independent investigation in order to prevent some possible conflicts. This is due to the interdisciplinary nature of this field which has a close relationship with physics and chemistry, as well as techniques and other professions, some of which have a long history with environmental, managerial, and economical elements. The vastness of materials engineering, the expectations from its education, classification of fields of studies, degree programs, subjects and education methods, and instructor and student conditions have all been previously discussed and analyzed. Suggestions are generally made on an idealistic basis to have a meaningful transition from the present situation towards an ideal one. Finally, the establishment of a research core in the education of materials engineering with the cooperation of all relevant groups has been recommended.

As essential today as in the past, the communities need to focus on the important principle of morality in social development, consciousness, mobility, responsibility, justice and self-improvement so as to derive help from these principles to determine and explain the position, duty and relationships between people in the world. The engineering community is one of many communities that have grown because of the growth of science in the modern era. So today, these people play an important role in directing the movement of these ships of community as captains in the ocean of immorality.
So, first it is necessary to study the complex cognition of morals then using this information in the communities where engineering is the leader. In this paper, a comprehensive definition of morality and its different types are expressed using the Holy Quran perspective. Finally, an explanation of engineering and its principles and the necessity of ethics in society are expressed.

This study probed into the opinions of teachers and electrical engineers (working at electric industry) on the importance of providing some courses of law, administration, communications and accounting for electrical engineering students. This applied study fell into the category of descriptive/survey research. Statistical population consisted of all teachers of Electrical Engineering Faculty at Shiraz University and all electrical engineers of Fars Regional Electric Company. Sixty-nine engineers are selected as a sample while all teachers (16 teachers) answered the questions. To collect the data, a questionnaire is designed and distributed. Questionnaire validity is tested by face/content approach while its reliability is confirmed by Cronbach's alpha and split-half methods. To analyze the data, some methods including Kolmogorov/Smirnov, binomial, t-test and Friedman are performed. Findings showed that from the viewpoint of teachers, accounting, correspondence courses are of moderate importance, and other courses including technical reporting, law, employer relations, management, intellectual property, environment and energy are very important. Despite this fact, electrical engineers believed that legal and accounting courses are less important than other courses. Furthermore, teachers opposite to electrical engineers, put the legal and intellectual property courses in a higher level of importance.

The main purpose of this research was to gain an awareness of the feasibility of implementing an entrepreneurial university and explain why and how it should be in the Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz. The research method is mixed and explanatory. Participants were the faculty members of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz. In the quantitative part of the research, a classified random sampling method was used and 120 subjects were selected on the basis of Cochran’s. The results of the quantitative data indicated the possibility of implementing all the components of an entrepreneurial university in Shahid Chamran University. In the qualitative part, the purposeful sampling method was used to select the appropriate items along with 12 members of the authorities and faculty members associated with entrepreneurship and industry. Semi-structured interviews were conducted which were later analyzed through the qualitative content analysis method. The overall results showed that faculty members accepted the difficulties and obstacles in the way of establishing an entrepreneurial university. They also were aware of a lack of infrastructure and political contexts, social, economic and culturally suitability in the country. However, they believed that the university had good capabilities and appropriate fields. The university can use some strategies to progress on its way to becoming an entrepreneurial university.

Nowadays, the production of science is one of the important tasks and missions of universities. In the view of Robert Merton, ethical behaviors are the essence of science, hence observing them is essentially useful for the realization of the fundamental goals of science. As such, insights from Merton and Midriff’s theory were integrated into the present study which aims at investigating the extent to which faculty members are committed to science norms and anti-norm bias. To this purpose, a questionnaire was administered to 460 postgraduate students of electrical-computer engineering, mechanical engineering and chemistry, from three universities in Tehran, Tarbiat Modares, and Shahid Rajaei. The participants’ responses were analyzed using SPSS program. The instrument validation was done through factor analysis which led into the extraction of three main components which explained 36.02 percent of the total variance. The results show that the instrument enjoys a satisfactory construct. Furthermore, the reliability of the instrument was estimated through Alpha Cronbach’s as 0.79. The results indicate that postgraduate students of engineering believe scientists and researchers are most often bound to the norms of science, but the results relevant to the anti-norms of science are also noticeable. In addition, with reference to the commitment to the norms and anti-norms of science, degrees of inconsistencies in ideas and beliefs were observed among the participants. When comparing the electrical-computer engineering, mechanical engineering and chemistry students, we found the chemistry students reported a lower mean for the faculty’s commitment to the norms of science.

The quality of college life is the overall satisfaction of students with university life as a whole, which based on the spill over theory is influenced by various sections of life. This study is done by the survey method with the aim of evaluating the quality of college life for native and non-native students of engineering courses at Tehran’s public universities of technology. The statistical study was populated by undergraduate students, and based on the Morgan Table, 214 samples were selected using the cluster and random method and the required data collected through a researcher-made questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire was verified based on the views of five experts. The reliability was then estimated using the Alpha Cronbach’s index on a pre-test of 15 samples and was found to be about 86 percent. Data analysis has been conducted using the SPSS package and required statistical tests. The quality of college life for all students was evaluated significantly lower than average, and the quality of college life of non-native students was found to be significantly higher than the quality of college life of native students. The low quality of college life shows a weakness in higher education policies. As students are one of the key stakeholders of higher education, a low quality of life and dissatisfaction could be a starting point leading away from the mission, ideals and development strategies of higher education and learning. Therefore, it is necessary to develop initiatives for increasing the quality of life of students as a basic criterion in higher education decision-makings.

Although visual stimuli have a great influence on design creativity, there are few studies in the education of architectural design courses focusing on this topic. The aim of this research is to study the effects of visual stimuli on improving student's creativity in design courses. The results of this research can be used by design course teachers. The hypothesis is that different qualities of stimuli have varied effects on student creativity in architectural design courses. An empirical study was done with architecture students (who had passed up to four design courses). They were divided into three groups. Two groups did a design task with different stimuli (rich stimuli for one group and an ambiguous sketch for the another). The third group did the same task without any stimuli. Three judges evaluated the creativity of the design solutions according to novelty and practicality. The scores were analyzed by ANOVA. The findings revealed the effects of visual stimuli on the creativity of design product and suggested that different types of visual stimuli have different effects on the practicality and originality of the products.