Exploring the Quality of Course Deployment in Engineering Education: A Quantitative Assessment using Quality Function Deployment

Due to the rapid changes of the industrial landscape, engineering education is becoming more dynamic in meeting the needs of the 21st century. Many industries may likely prefer special skills over traditional degrees, which necessitates the to keep updating our course curricula in response to the required skillsets. At the same time, it is very important to understand students’ perceptions of this rapidly changing educational portfolio. This paper attempts to explore how our rapidly changing course curricula can develop students’ skillsets while maintaining their expectations and adaptability. To do so, we conduct a well-organized anonymous student survey on the different aspects of a particular course and evaluate using the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) tool, subsequently. The course titled “Design for Manufacturability” (MFG 5311) is used as the case study in this study, where 17 students enrolled in this course were considered as the study population. The course was offered as one of the core courses of the Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering (IMSE) department at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in the Spring 2021 Semester. From this study, we extract several key findings regarding curricular enhancement, students’ expectations, and technical skillsets development from students’ perspectives