Measuring student perceptions of marine engineering curriculum: scale development and validation

Students are essential stakeholders in the education system. However, there needs to be more focus on how their perceptions can be understood to improve or redesign the curriculum. Thus, this paper attempts to develop a comprehensive scale to measure the perception of engineering students of their curriculum specifically for marine engineering education. The study identified a 12-dimensional construct that covers aspects of a quality curriculum. The data collected using cross-sectional sampling supports this dimensional structure of the attributes of quality curriculum and the internal consistency and validity of the scale. The outcome of this paper will add to the existing knowledge pool by understanding students’ viewpoints about curriculum quality and further help accommodate these in designing curricula. Though this scale focuses on marine engineering education, owing to its proximity to other domains of technical education and the global nature of the primary construct, the same may be administered and tested for the quality of the curriculum of technical education in general.