Abstract:

The requirements of the Romanian labor-market for new skills of the engineers are increasingly demanding. To meet these demands, technical universities in Romania participate in the annual strategically and functionally benchmarking process. In this processes, the evaluation of teachers by students is an important component in finding solutions to improve teaching and raise the level of practical knowledge of the future engineer.

The first part of the paper presents the results of a research done on secondary sources, aimed to establish the main strengths and weaknesses of the current teaching system as assessed by students. The main weakness identified was the tendency to focus on the national university ranking system rather than on practical teaching curricula that is related to the most up-to-date processes and organizations. On the other hand, the fruitful collaboration between academics and students, the positive climate of understanding and accountability, as well as the enthusiasm expressed in teaching, the content and newness of course support are the most important condition to be meet by teaching. But nowadays the employers need not only knowledge, but also creativity and adaptability to industrial processes, which are different from one organization to another, and the current evaluation system risks to channel the teaching activity into a wrong direction.

The second part of the paper presents the results of the research from primary sources. The students from Economic Engineering of “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu were engaged in a semester project aimed to shift from predominantly quantitative evaluation of teachers (conducted at the university level) to a more qualitative assessment, facing one of the most important skills of the future engineer – the creativity. The teacher has to ascertain the students with superior creative aptitudes and create special opportunities for the development of them at full capacity. And this could only be achieved by a teacher who demonstrates creativity in teaching.

Along with creativity in teaching there can be found many other directions for qualitative research in order to improve the transmission of information and knowledge from teacher to student and provide future engineers with skills required by the industry.

Keywords:

Quantity, quality, evaluation, Romanian, engineers.