Comparative study of undergraduate level electrical and electronic engineering curricula of selected university in OIC countries

Abstract

Curriculum in education, is the outline of concepts to be taught to students to help them meet the content standards. Curriculum is what is taught in a given course or subject and it refers to an interactive system of instruction with specific goals, contents, strategies, measurement, and resources. On the other hand, Assessment in education ascertains the extent of achievement of a program learning objectives by the students and the effectiveness of the delivery approaches and processes used by teachers in educational institutions. The assurances of quality assessment in engineering universities can result in the production of highly competent graduates for the labor market. The OIC member countries are facing major challenges in Engineering professional registration standardization as a whole and in the field of Electrical & Electronic Engineering as a whole due to the significant differences in the undergraduate curricula in these countries. This paper compared undergraduate Electrical & Electronic Engineering curricula in five countries members of the OIC i.e. Osun States University of Nigeria, King Fahd University of Egypt, Kocaeli University of Turkey, University Teknikal Malaysia Melaka of Malaysia and Qatar University of Qatar. A review of the course requirements, course credits and course hours of these universities were presented and eventually compared. The research grouped the courses into three different categories: general courses, core courses and electives courses. Some similarities were noted among all five universities. The main similarity is the teaching of modern language such as English. Secondly, five core course subjects are taught in the five universities. These subjects are electrical, electronic, Control Eng. (System), Electromagnetics and the end of year project of study. Regarding the assessment systems of the universities, although each university has its own specificity, some similarities between King Fahd University and Qatar University which both have the same system for evaluating students was observed. Therefore, based on these outcomes, engineering universities are recommended to improve the existing programs of the OIC member states universities in order to better promote and reinforce cooperation and exchange programs in between different universities. OIC Engineering universities are equally recommended to consider the perceptions of their students and teachers and put more emphasis on the practice of quality and authentic evaluation practices and better train teachers in the use of appropriate teaching and assessment techniques.