Aligning an engineering education program to the washington accord requirements: example of the University of Botswana

• Autores: M. Tunde Oladiran, Giuditta Pezzota, Jacek Uziak, Marian Gizejowski
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 29, no. Extra 6, 2013, págs. 1591-1603
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The accreditation systems of engineering education programs governed by the Washington Accord have evolved in order torespond to modern technological and scientific development. The principal purpose of the paper is to indicate that the process re-engineering model commonly employed in business environments can also be used in an educational system. In particular, thepaper describes the process of re-engineering used for the transformation of the BEng (Mech) program in order to align it with theaccreditation requirements. The study adopts a Business Re-engineering Process (BRP) in which engineering education isconsidered as a process. A modified McKinsey’s re-engineering model was chosen as a tool to re-engineer the educational system.The model involves five broad phases, namely, identification, review & analysis, re-design, test & implementation and continuousimprovement. The paper concentrates on the first two phases. The existing curriculum is mapped according to the graduateattributes, competency profiles and the Exit Level Outcomes of the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA). From the list ofidentified deficiencies it can be concluded that the major shortcoming of the program is not its content but its delivery. It isrecommended that innovative flexible delivery methods should be used as teaching styles.