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Session 1260

On Providing Flexibility, Adaptability, Efficiency I

and Quality in Engineering Education*

Andrzej Krasniewski, Eugeniusz Toczylowski, Jerzy Woznicki Warsaw University of Technology I

Typical universities of science and technology maybe considered as very large organizations with high budget, employment and expensive equipment; therefore they require efficient and effective management. Moreover, one can observe the growing competition among universities, the rapid change of technologies and markets, the new requirements for better adaptability of the curricula, greater flexibility to students, the increased requirements for smooth management of all academic and administrative activities, the need for providing higher quality standards of teaching, and also the need for more efficient utilization of the limited academic resources. These requirements are difficult to satisfy in traditional organizations and thus imply the need for better organization, improved methodologies for development of flexible and adaptable curricula and more efficient resource management. As higher education institutions, following the trend in the manufacturing and service sectors of the economy, start to move from “mass production” to “mass customization ?, [21] new ideas are required which make it possible to customize the studies, i.e. “to deliver education as it i; needed by the individual”. In recent years, a number of new ideas have been presented on how to modernize engineering studies to meet the new challenges facing higher education [11, 20, 16,6,9, 10,7,24,3, 14]. A significant effort has been taken by many academic institutions all around the world to implement these ideas and adjust engineering curricula to the needs of the rapidly changing society [7, 8, 18,4, 5]0 A s most discussions on restructuring engineering studies indicate, flexibility and adaptability of the system of study are among the most essential features that could make engineering more attractive for the prospective students, and thereby allow engineering-oriented academic institutions to compete successfully on the market of higher education services. It should be also noted that flexibility and adaptability both affect the quality of education. In this paper, we discuss our experience in introducing a flexible and adaptable system of study at the Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology at Warsaw University of Technology. We present and analyse a number of ideas already implemented at WUT which, if followed elsewhere, would enhance flexibility and adaptability of an engineering curriculum on one hand, and on the other hand would assure efficiency and relatively low costs of studies and also help to achieve high quality standards. The organizational and managerial issues associated with the process of restructuring the system of study are discussed and some remarks on the impact of the proposed solutions on the quality of engineering education are given.

*Partially supported by KBN grant S505 03804

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Woznicki, J., & Krasniewski, A., & Toczylowski, E. (1996, June), On Providing Flexibility, Adaptability, Efficiency And Quality In Engineering Education Paper presented at 1996 Annual Conference, Washington, District of Columbia. 10.18260/1-2--6218