فصلنامه آموزش مهندسی ایران
پیاپی 97 (بهار 1402)

Financial literacy and understanding its concepts is of particular importance for students; because the behavioral and financial decisions taken by them will have a significant impact on their financial and job status in the future. Based on this, the aim of the present study is to investigate the causal relationship between economics education and financial literacy, decision-making skills and entrepreneurial intention of students. In terms of purpose, the present research is applied, and according to the way of data collection, it is descriptive-correlational, based on structural equation modeling. The statistical population under study is 2733 students of technical and engineering faculty of Urmia University, of which 338 were selected by stratified random sampling. The research data collection tool is a questionnaire, and to analyze the data, firstly, the indicators of the research variables are calculated by the multiple correlation analysis method using the XLSTAT 2019 software, and then the desired model is estimated using the Stata 17 software.  The findings of the research showed that economics education has a positive and significant effect on students’ financial literacy, and economics education through financial literacy has an effect on students’ decision-making skills and entrepreneurial intention. Therefore, higher education decision-makers are advised to consider economics-related course units in the curriculum of engineering courses, and by teaching financial literacy, provide the basis for improving students’ financial-social decision-making and economic growth and sustainable development of society.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the philosophical infrastructure of professional ethics education in engineering colleges along with the introduction of important and neglected philosophical approaches in this field. Philosophical school of thought, in addition to being regarded as lenses for examining engineering ethics education, are also influential in setting engineering education programs and can create a balance between scientific and non-scientific subjects. In this way engineering colleges can train engineers who are both experts in science and knowledge, and also have engineering ethics. In this field various studies and results have been reported.  By a systematic review method the studies at the end of 2021 are compiled and compared. The Scopus and Magiran search engines are searched by examining the terms “philosophy” and “engineering ethics education” in the title, keywords and abstracts of articles. The results of the studies show one important philosophical infrastructure and eight neglected philosophical infrastructures. 82.76% of the articles considered modernism as the dominant but ineffective approach, and 65.52% of the articles identified the lack of attention to the comprehensive (inclusive) approach in teaching engineering ethics as the most neglected approach. The position of postmodernism, phenomenology, human-centered, comprehensive, religious, collaborative, situational, critical, constructivist approaches in educating ethical and professional engineers are empty in the current era.

Holding short-term skill enhancement workshops can be a good opportunity to increase the performance and develop the abilities of experts for the all-round growth and development of society. The purpose of the present research is to investigate the effectiveness of holding short-term skill enhancement workshops for automatic transmission repairs for three years and for a statistical population of 142 people. First, the requirements and preparations for holding a standard skill enhancement workshop at four levels of needs assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of training effectiveness were carried out. After that, by selecting qualified instructors and training them and obtaining the required specialized qualifications, 142 people who participated in these workshops were trained and monitored over a period of three years. The results show that only 42% of this statistical population continued to work in the aforementioned specialized field and 58% stopped working for various reasons. Only 22% managed to achieve good and excellent scores based on Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model. 20% of the people are still working in this specialized field, while their evaluation scores remain weak and average, and they have no motivation to improve their evaluation level.

In various engineering computation, formulas play a key role. Pure mathematical relationships have always been a challenge for students. If an attractive method can be used to memorize the different parameters in the formulas with innovative methods, there is a good incentive for the student to gain a deeper understanding of mathematical equations. In this paper, this method is applied to the vehicle power relation, and proposed idea is formed with the help of various images. Choosing a suitable image that represents a concept has subtleties. By looking at these images and the answers received, the appropriate images can be selected. For implementation, different methods are introduced in the classroom. These practices are expressed in the form of classroom activities as well as extracurricular activities. To apply the proposed method, students’ participation in the class can be used well and assignments can also be allocated individually or in groups. Variety in the methods used and the type of exercises can each enhance some of the students’ skills. This method has been implemented for several semesters in both undergraduate and graduate levels. A survey of students shows the effectiveness of the proposed method in perpetuating the parameters in a mathematical formula.

One of the desirable and expected features of engineering education curricula is the continuous and regular revision of the course content according to the needs of society and employers. In Iran’s higher education, these revisions have been conducted in a centralized manner by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, for a long time. In the higher education systems of the world, however, professors and educational groups play the main role in promoting and improving curricula. One of the famous approaches is curriculum drawing or curriculum mapping. In this approach, professors are used and in a collaborative and cooperative way. Considering that the Ministry delegated the powers of curriculum planning to the level one and two universities, the aim of the current research was to investigate the degree of tendency of engineering groups to implement the curriculum design approach and also to investigate the prerequisites for its implementation. In this regard, 14 people from the managers of engineering departments of Kashan University were selected by purposeful sampling method. A semi-structured interview was conducted with them to collect information. The data obtained from the interviews were coded and categorized in a holistic way in the ATLAS.Ti software environment. The findings showed that despite the delegation of curriculum authority to Kashan University, revision of engineering curricula is not done regularly. The mentality of engineering professors is more in line with the focused approach and the delivery of high-level curricula. From the analysis of the interview’s, it can be said with confidence that the necessity of implementing decentralized planning approaches, such as curriculum design, is fully understood by engineering professors. However, factors such as the lack of knowledge of academic authority for curriculum planning, the lack of clear educational and administrative regulations, and the lack of necessary support have caused decentralized curriculum planning approaches not to be used systematically.

The challenges of electronic education in engineering probability and statistics are investigated with a mixed study. The views of teachers and students in the College of  Engineering of the University of Tehran have been analyzed in the two academic semesters 2021-2 and 2022-1. For this purpose, an interview was conducted with the teachers and a questionnaire was developed for students. The teacher’s opinions are analyzed by thematic analysis and inductive coding. Student’s views are evaluated and compared based on statistical tests for two different semesters. A correlation analysis is performed on the student’s answers. From the opinions of teachers, the challenges are evaluation challenges, reduction of interactions, lack of proper infrastructure, lack of facilities, lack of culture. The prevalence of cheating, challenges of presenting content simultaneously and asynchronous energy consumption, and the challenges of not being physically present are also studed. The challenges of the students include the increase in the number of assignments and tests, the quality of the technology infrastructure, the decrease in the class dynamics, the lack of attention to the diversity and quality of the content, the unfairness of the evaluations, the reduction of interactions, motivation, enthusiasm in the class and it is not possible to solve enough exercises.