فصلنامه آموزش مهندسی ایران
پیاپی 96 (زمستان 1401)

Industry 4.0 is one of the most challenging topics for engineering design as well as higher education. One of the fascinating topics of academic and industrial circles has been the creation of capabilities, requirements, and competencies in students to adapt to industry 4.0. This study aims to identify the capabilities, requirements, and competencies of higher education and graduate students based on a qualitative approach and the meta-synthesis study. Findings indicate that competencies and requirements in the dimensions of: 1. Competencies of engineering students (individual abilities, specialized knowledge, and skills, social abilities, technological skills), 2. University requirements (educational requirements 4.0, educational contexts, curriculum requirements, faculty improvement), 3. Non-university requirements (industry strategic skills 4.0, labor market requirements), 4. Human resource development were identified. The current study›s findings would be useful for planning the development of new approaches in engineering education curricula.

The present research was carried out to present a model for improving the competitive intelligence of first-level industrial universities in Tehran. In terms of practical purpose, in terms of mixed approach, and terms of strategy, this research was a survey in the qualitative part, content an approach, and in terms of strategy, this research was a survey type in the qualitative part, content analysis, and in quantitative part correlation. In the qualitative part, in addition to reviewing the texts, 23 people were selected as participants in the research in a targeted way to conduct semi-structured interviews. In the quantitative part, the total size of the statistical population was 1792 people, including 1253 faculty members and 539 seniors and experts of the universities. The original sample size was estimated to be 317 people according to the Crosby-Morgan table, and according to the use of the structural equation technique to maintain the necessary power for more stable estimates of parameters and standard errors, the sample size was finally estimated to be 350 people. The findings of this research show that competitive intelligence in universities includes eight main dimensions and eight influential factors and in order to improve competitive intelligence, investment should be made on them.

The main objective of this research is to investigate engineering pedagogy approaches to improve the quality of teaching in engineering education. This qualitative research was carried out using the seven-step method of Sandlovski and Barroso. The meta-synthesis team consisted of three experts in curriculum planning and one expert in meta-synthesis research. 27 related research sources were used as the basis of the analysis, the result of which is the extraction of 5 themes of students’ individual characteristics, professors’ professional competences, course plan status, society’s needs and values, and environmental and organizational factors. The validity of the data was confirmed using the techniques of reliability, transferability. Alignment and trustworthiness of the data was also confirmed by the accurate guidance of the flow of information collection and alignment of the researchers. The findings showed that to guide science and the art of education, pedagogy can be linked to real pedagogical situations and learners to be able to acquire new information, behaviors and skills with full understanding using it. Using the engineering pedagogy approach, constructive interaction between professor and student is formed, which leads to deep learning in learners.

Global challenges regarding climate changes, food and energy resources security, poverty and human rights have received serious attention in the recent years. The solutions provided by policy-makers and researchers have clearly not been able to be effective on a global scale. For instance, nearly one-third of the world’s population do not have enough access to safe drinking water, the devastating effects of global warming pose threats to environment and people’s health and relative poverty and conflicts have spread in many parts of the world. These situations alert global and futuristic perspectives to the sustainable development. Since the concept of sustainability is inherently complex with interdisciplinary nature including economic, environmental and social aspects, it requires sustainable development education in all fields of university study, especially for engineering students. By describing the characteristics of sustainable engineering education and a domestic and foreign literature review in this field, this article tries to provide a scheme to include the interdisciplinary aspects of sustainable development in the curriculum of engineering students. In this regard, the subject of an integrated course was proposed and analyzed with emphasis on strengthening the social knowledge of engineers and increasing their ability to find and understand the mutual effects of different aspects of sustainability. It was argued that such a subject could prepare future engineers to confront and find sustainable solutions to the complex challenges of the modern world.

Sustainability tools should be taught to civil engineers to make the most sustainable engineering decisions in projects. This study is conducted mainly to compare the application of the sustainability approach in civil engineering education in Iran and some developed countries. In this study, the investigated factors are measured using the comparative-descriptive method. In this regard, the importance of sustainability education is discussed in addition to examining the views of domestic and foreign professional organizations. Besides, some solutions for sustainability education in civil engineering are provided by describing sustainability education topics in some world-class universities and comparing them with the approved civil engineering education program in Iran. Studies show that the educational programs of the country’s higher education centres can be revised in some aspects to teach sustainability concepts. Sustainability concepts should be taught operationally by modifying and updating teaching methods and connecting students with industry and knowledge-based companies. In this way, students will get the necessary preparation to apply these concepts in the design, construction, and operation of civil infrastructure after passing the relevant courses. The quality of teaching sustainability tools and concepts can be improved by using interactive and encouraging approaches and group activities of civil students and engineers.

Advancement of jobs towards professionalism, doubles the importance of encountering with moral conflicts and adopting decisions which are in accordance with the engineering ethics. Observing the mentioned ethics becomes possible by determining the factors of professional competency and then observing them. Thus, the current research aims to identify and prioritize the components of professional competence on the basis of engineering ethics using the fuzzy Delphi approach combined with the exploratory mixed method. At the first stage, professional competencies of engineering, in the form of 14 components, were extracted from the literature of related research and 9 codes in the area of engineering ethics. Professional competencies of industrial engineering were identified by the analysis of content and interviewing 15 experts from the industrial engineering community. The fuzzy Delphi approach has been used in order to reach a group consensus among the experts. The findings have demonstrated that “safety, society’s well-being, sustainable management of resources, responsibility, rendering services in accordance with one’s level of competence, avoiding the conflict of interests, neutrality and honesty, justice, experience, maintaining and developing the level of knowledge and skill, having a cognizance of technology, tendency to learning and nurturance, improving the status of engineering profession, being respectful to people’s personalities, and supporting the professional councils”, have consecutively the highest priority. The results of this research have been effective in framing the moral ethics codes of industrial engineers.