The optimal arrangement of the curriculum is an important part of every educational program. During the decision making about this arrangement, one should consider many factors which have impact on the curriculum. In this chapter, a struggle to the design of the curriculum through graph theory is made.
TopCurriculum Design
Nowadays, the education is known as a complicated phenomenon. Hence, it should respond to the condition changes, challenges, and increasing demands. The engineering education is known as a sub-set of the education. Because of the large amount of the changes, the long term behavior of these systems could not be predicted. The changes of the technology is so rapid that half-life of almost every innovation is about a few years. The national demand-supply condition is changed by the mobility of the professionals, and this phenomenon eventually forces the planners to propose global programs. Arranging an up-to-date curriculum concerning the constraints is the subject of this section.
An important part of every college is the optimal arrangement of the curriculum. This arrangement should achieve the educational goals of a college (Finch, 99). On the other hand, the arranged curriculum should make decisions about training program, resources, and the improvement of laboratories and facilities (Wang, 2004).
Several constraints such as the initial content of the curriculum, the required and available resources for the implementation of the content, the general strategies for the implementation of the content, and the desired outputs of the curriculum affect the optimal curriculum. Other significant factors of an optimal curriculum are: required courses and credits, schedule of the elective and required contents, the maximum and minimum requirements of each person per year. Hence, establishment of a curriculum which satisfies all of the related factors is a complicated task. Beside this arrangement, the systematic methodology of searching for this curriculum is a critical issue too (Wang, 2005).
The implemented model for the curriculum development is as follows: