Analysis on Quality Evaluation of Higher Engineering Education from the Perspective of Outcome-based Education

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution brings new opportunities and challenges to the development of countries worldwide. As an important development power, engineering science and technology has become critical means for a country to stand out in the fierce international competition, the international engineering construction competition, and the core factor to improve the international right of speech. Higher engineering education is the main path for engineering science technological transfer and development. Hence, determining how to make a scientific evaluation of the comprehensive quality of higher engineering education, improve the higher engineering education quality, and train engineering innovative talents are keys to improving the comprehensive national competitiveness. Based on the outcome-based education (OBE) theory, studies concerning higher engineering education quality evaluation in the European and American developed countries were reviewed first. In this study, a comprehensive quality evaluation index system for higher engineering education was built through a survey of intelligent manufacturing and engineering education experts from 14 universities from applied science and engineering areas in Jiangsu Province of China. Moreover, the comprehensive quality of higher engineering education in these 14 universities was evaluated comprehensively using the AHP-TOPSIS method. Influencing factors of higher engineering education quality were ranked by using a barrier model. Results demonstrate that the established evaluation index system is operable. The judgment matrixes in the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) all pass the consistency check and the weight of teaching management is the highest (0.2950). The comprehensive engineering education quality ranking of universities is consistent with that of the third party. Teaching management is the first barrier factor in the barrier model and more attention has to be paid to disturbances of administration factors in universities against the improvement of higher engineering education quality. The obtained conclusions have very important values to updating the engineering education personnel training system, digital transformation, and improvement of engineering majors like intelligent manufacturing, as well as improving the innovation ability of engineering talents.