Browsing by Author "Dakhil, Abdulmuhsen"
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Item DEVELOPMENT OF EFFECTIVE METHODOLOGY FOR IMPROVING UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM CURRICULUM IN HIGHER EDUCATION UTILIZING SIX SIGMA APPROACH(2022-02-15) Dakhil, Abdulmuhsen; Özkil, AltanThe curriculum structure of undergraduate programs in all universities is based on the required knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed in business life by graduates of related department. Graduates will use their knowledge, skills, and competencies to fulfill the requirements of jobs related with selected department. However, there is a general concern that the existing undergraduate programs of universities are not providing graduates with the required level of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that they will need in order to succeed in professional practice. This simply shows the gap between what is taught in university and what is needed in industry. For that reason, a considerable number of graduates are employed in the industrial environment where there isn’t often close match between the elements of their education, and the skills and knowledge required for the success in the industry. As a result, the academia has been attempting to improve curricula for many years. Some new courses are added, some of current courses are deleted, and some of the current courses are combined. A remarkable amount of research has been conducted on curriculum development. What is lacking, a methodology that incorporates the many dimensions that affecting the process of curriculum improvement as well as quantitative tools that address the requirements of the various stakeholders that are essential to improving the curriculum. The aim of this study is developing a quantitative methodology utilizing Six-Sigma quality improvement approach to make the changes required for improving undergraduate program curriculum of higher education institutions. The changes needed for improving the curriculum can be identified in terms of knowledge, skills, and competencies that graduate from a particular program curriculum need to possess by implementing this methodology. The developed methodology was implemented to make improvement in one of the engineering departments in higher education. Manufacturing engineering department was selected for this purpose. A set of desired competencies were developed from the exiting data related to manufacturing engineering programs. This set is then used in the development of a comprehensive survey to capture different perspectives from various stakeholders such as graduates, employers, and academics. Statistical analysis of the survey was done by SPSS to get some information about the importance and their roles in the performance of developed competencies to identify where improvement efforts to be targeted. Some changes to the current curriculum of the manufacturing engineering department were proposed by using the developed methodology. Proposed changes were verified by using commercial recruitment adds for the manufacturing engineering department in kariyer.net.