فصلنامه آموزش مهندسی ایران
پیاپی 50 (تابستان 1390)

ABSTRACT-Engineering is an international activity, thus engineering educationshould be considered as an international affair as well. From the beginning of thepresent century, progression of engineers outside their own country, study of highereducation or finding jobs, has stood out as an undeniable fact. With this taken intoconsideration, the education acquired by engineering students should have a minimumstandard. During the last two decades, an international movement has been establishedfor the review of engineering education, accreditation of its outcomes, and making theaccreditation systems in different countries converge to a more or less unique standard.A common element in almost all these systems is shifting the education focus fromeducation inputs (what the university presents) to education outputs or outcomes (whatthe students have acquired). Therefore, a list of minimum outcomes expected from anengineering graduate has been determined. In addition to having the necessaryknowledge in mathematics, sciences and engineering fundamentals, ability to designand execute engineering operations, the list also emphasizes on the skills such aseffective communication and teamwork, and positive attitude toward constant educationand professional ethics. Agreement on the basic outcomes of engineering education hasprovided the essential basis for achieving a homogenous accreditation model in theinternational level. In the present paper, after a review of engineering educationaccreditation procedures in various countries and in the international level, suggestionsto promote Iran’s place in this international movement are proposed.

ABSTRACT- Professional ability can be considered as a complex relationship between the three concepts of knowledge, skill, and attitude. Therefore, an engineering education program should educate graduates, who in addition to having enough knowledge of engineering concepts, also have skill and ability in communication, teamwork, self-learning and have the right attitude toward the social, economical, and environmental contents of engineering and continuous education. In order to assess the graduates’ preparedness toencounter the realities of the job market, every engineering education program, in addition to its defined objectives, should have a system for assessment of the program’s outcomes; i.e., to what extent those objectives were fulfilled. In Iran, despite the considerable increase in the number of educational institutions and diversity of course programs within the last two decades, a similar attention has not been paid to the independent assessment of educational programs and their products, i.e., the graduates. Following the establishment of the Engineering Education Association of Iran in 2009, executing a mechanism for accreditation of Iran’s engineering education programs became a priority in the action plan. With this mindset, the Organization for Accreditation of Iran’s Engineering Education is founded. The target accreditation process of this organization consists of two phases of internal and external assessment. Internal assessment is conducted by the educational institution and according to the predefined criteria. External assessment is conducted by the accreditation organization, and measures the amount of engineering education outcomes and program’s quality improvement with the consideration of the internal assessment report. This paper presents a mechanism for the execution of the accreditation process of Iran’s engineering education programs, including internal and external assessments.

ABSTRACT- Quality culture, which is a sub-set of organizational culture, helps continuous quality enhancement. As such, quality culture at the university level, is defined as a collection of beliefs, attitudes, values and norms that academic members, managers and administrators share; and common activities that they participate in to achieve university’s quality assurance. Quality culture is composed of two aspects: (a) psychological/ cultural, (b) structural / official processes for quality improvement. Psychological aspect of quality culture may be considered at the individual and collective level. Furthermore, official processes for quality improvement includes: definition of quality, modeling, constructing /selecting measuring instruments, data collection and analysis, quality judgment, preparing reports and finally acting upon the changes towards improving and quality assurance. Based on the above, this article first reviews the sort of beliefs, values, attitudes, and expectations that academic members, managers and administrators of a university should share and common activities that they are supposed to participate in, at the university level, in order to achieve continuous quality improvement. In the second part of the article, the need for apprehension of quality by academic members and their commitments towards quality education and research at the departmental level, through internal quality assessment and external quality assurance are discussed. Furthermore, the structural /managerial aspect of quality culture is analyzed. Finally, the processes of propagating quality culture at the university level, with emphasis on engineering departments, are considered.

Higher education institutions confront many chances and challenges like increasing expectations on quality of higher education programs, economic and social conditions, technology changes, student population mobility and changeable paradigms in teaching and learning methods. These issues challenge the traditional methods of academic society.In this context, there is an obvious need for improvement of performance of facultymembers. Engineering education emphasize on acquisition of knowledge rather thanpaying attention to the development of skills and attitudes. Improvement of facultymembers performance not only needs expertise in special scientific field but also knowing other skills like learning psychology, evaluation methods, managing and organizing educational processes and so on.In this paper, based on research results, the following questions were answered: 1- whatis the concept of teaching and learning? 2- What are the components of teaching –learning process? 3- How much is the significance of components in teaching – learningprocess?

Globalization and knowledge-oriented economic development havebrought about basic changes in the structure and responsibilities of higher education allover the world. The value of nations mostly depends on their easily accessibility to themanagement and government rather than material resources. Effective education causesthe improvement of scientific foundation; therefore, it plays a significant role in thefuture development. The strategic thought makes the organizations ready to confrontand conform to future conditions successfully. The strategic programs would give aclear picture of moving from the status quo to more favorable situation and provide abetter understanding of the environment. So it helps the organization perform moreeffectively. Thus, it is important to evaluate the organization competitive environmentand its strategic position in the strategic planning. The university inputs are finance,building, equipment, program, facilities and human resources and its process includeseducation, research and providing services, keeping and transferring cultural heritageand technology; its outputs are experts and specialists in innovation, invention,scientific discoveries, production and expansion of knowledge boundaries. However, itdoes not prepare the effective research conditions because of the inefficiency ofacademic systems for better output. The old tradition of writing pamphlets is governingthe educational system and because of the lack of a well-organized system and wrongpolicies, university environment is changing into a traditional educational one withoutproductivity. This qualitative research was conducted through structured interviews with experts. Its aim was to identify barriers of effective academic planning and qualityand productivity.

Industrial engineering is one of the relatively new fields among engineering disciplines which has developed during recent years. This is true for Iran as well and this discipline has rapidly grown during the last decade. Studying the status of Iran regarding Industrial Engineering could facilitate identifying appropriate strategies for its future consideration. For this purpose, 87150 papers related to industrial engineering, published in the recent 50 years, were selected from 54 refereed journals. The required data including the name of countries relating to these papers were recorded in a database. The published papers during this period analyzed according to the geographical areas. The results showed that the majority of published papers were from North America, East Asia and West Europe. The ranking of Iran on the basis of cumulative data was 22. Then the number of articles published during the last 15 years was compared with neighboring countries the results indicate that Iran has the second position during the last years. In terms of growth rate, Iran has improved its position in recent years with the highest ranking in the region.

The main purpose of this study is to analyze Ramin Agricultural & Natural Resources University and Razi University College of Agriculture faculty perceptions about the barriers of the utilization of blended learning.Whole population are 110 including all faculty of the Ramin and Razi University. By using stratified proportional random sampling 75 subject were selected for the study. For the data collection, a structured questionnaire is used. Data was collected by the use of a questionnaire whose its validity (Face validity) is obtained by a panel of experts and university professors. Reliabilities measured by Corunbach Alpha test (
=0.81) which showed the reliability of the questionnaire. Factor analysis is used to reduce and classify variables consisting the barriers of the utilization of blended learning. The results of the factor analysis showed that faculty perceptions about barriers utilization of blended learning could be classified into four categories including: personal barriers, infrastructure barriers, economical barriers and lack of management and organizational skills. There are four factors explaining 54.16 percentage of variables total variance.