Establishing the overall service quality of engineering education: fuzzy logic approach

Measuring overall service quality (OSQ) is gaining prominence in higher education due to the increased competition among engineering education institutions (EEIs) and growing awareness about value for money among the public. Determination of OSQ on certain institutional aspects is done by various agencies throughout the world. Each system uses a different set of weighted indicators to measure the overall service quality of institutions. Five service quality factors, namely professionalism, integrated education, facilities, responsiveness and empathy are considered in the study. Trapezoidal fuzzy numbers are used to determine the aggregate weights of the factors to handle the vagueness present in the linguistic values of the stakeholders’ subjective opinions. Final weights of the factors are assessed by taking the distances of each factor between Fuzzy Positive Ideal Rating and Fuzzy Negative Ideal Rating. An illustrative study is presented to determine the OSQ of EEIs. The results help to focus on the factors which need immediate attention to enhance the quality of EEIs.     

Investigating the learning challenges presented by digital technologies to the College of Education in Kuwait University

There is now widespread recognition that digital technologies, particularly portable hand held devices capable of Internet connection, present opportunities and challenges to the way in which student learning is organized in schools, colleges and institutions of higher education in the 21st Century. Traxler, Journal of the Research Centre for Educational Technology, 6(1), 3–15 (2010) suggests such devices are pervasive and ubiquitous, conspicuous and unobtrusive, noteworthy and taken-for-granted with everyone typically owning one, using one and often having more than one. As a consequence it has been argued that the availability of such devices, controlled mainly by the student and not the teacher, has the potential to change the traditional dynamics and pedagogical patterns of the learning environment (Burden et al. 2012). Education institutions, however, typically remain organized around spatial and temporal considerations such as buildings, timetables, calendars and internal structures which are designed to classify and manage students. In the case study reported here students and faculty teaching staff from the College of Education in the Kuwait University were surveyed in order to assess their access to such technologies, their capability to use them effectively in support of achieving planned learning outcomes and the implications for change that could emanate from such findings.     

Reduction rate of dragload and downdrag of piles by taper angles

Taper angle is one of the effective methods to reduce the dragload and downdrag of piles under the surcharge load. The model tests on the tapered pile and uniform cross-section pile embedded in sand were carried out under the surcharge load. The values of dragload and downdrag of piles versus the surcharge loads were measured. Based on the concentric cylinder shearing theory, a simplified theoretical model for calculating the dragload and downdrag of tapered piles with small taper angles under the surcharge load was proposed considering the angle effect. The correctness of the developed theoretical model was validated through comparing with the model test results obtained in this study and previous literature. Then the parametric studies of the taper angle, surcharge, strength and modulus of soil were discussed. It is shown that the tapered pile with the taper angle of 3° can reduce approximately 65% of the maximum dragload value and 30% of the downdrag value compared with a uniform cross-section pile. The value of downdrag can be decreased by approximately 50% compared with a uniform crosssection pile in the same average pile diameter.