Evaluation of the Environmental Engineering Study Programme at University

2019
Jeļena Pubule, Antra Kalnbaļķīte, Ērika Teirumnieka, Dagnija Blumberga

The European Union has placed competence-based teaching and competence-based education as one of its highly relevant goals. Due to mass higher education, the assessment of effectiveness and relevance evaluation of environmental engineering study programmes should become an important issue. Presently the focus of the evaluation on multi-disciplinary study programmes varies from the evaluation of attitudes, impacts or effectiveness of utilisation-focused evaluation, summative evaluation and participatory evaluation approaches. The objective of this study was to propose an effective framework to evaluate the Environmental Engineering Master study programmes. During the research, the evaluation of existing study programmes on environmental engineering in Europe was conducted, information about the study courses, teaching methods, assessment methods and competences was used for the analysis. The results obtained showed that lectures, site visits, group coursework, practical laboratories and role-plays allows to reach the necessary knowledge, skills and competences and to provide an effective and relevant education to the Environmental Engineering Master programme students. The proposed evaluation framework was tested and approbated on new Riga Technical University Master study programmes on Environmental Engineering and Bioeconomy.

Keywords
The European Union has placed competence-based teaching and competence-based education as one of its highly relevant goals. Due to mass higher education, the assessment of effectiveness and relevance evaluation of environmental engineering study programmes should become an important issue. Presently the focus of the evaluation on multi-disciplinary study programmes varies from the evaluation of attitudes, impacts or effectiveness of utilisation-focused evaluation, summative evaluation and participatory evaluation approaches. The objective of this study was to propose an effective framework to evaluate the Environmental Engineering Master study programmes. During the research, the evaluation of existing study programmes on environmental engineering in Europe was conducted, information about the study courses, teaching methods, assessment methods and competences was used for the analysis. The results obtained showed that lectures, site visits, group coursework, practical laboratories and role-plays allows to reach the necessary knowledge, skills and competences and to provide an effective and relevant education to the Environmental Engineering Master programme students. The proposed evaluation framework was tested and approbated on new Riga Technical University Master study programmes on Environmental Engineering and Bioeconomy.
DOI
10.2478/rtuect-2019-0070

Pubule, J., Kalnbaļķīte, A., Teirumnieka, Ē., Blumberga, D. Evaluation of the Environmental Engineering Study Programme at University. Environmental and Climate Technologies, 2019, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 310-324. ISSN 1691-5208. e-ISSN 2255-8837. Available from: doi:10.2478/rtuect-2019-0070

Publication language
English (en)