Avaliação da percepção dos estudantes sobre a qualidade do curso de Engenharia de Produção da UFAL/Campus do Sertão

Abstract

Industrial Engineering (IE) is the engineering field that has the highest growth in the Brazilian scenario of Higher Education since 1950. However, studies have verified that the qualitative growth of these programs did not occur with the same proportions, emerging the need for scientific researches that evaluate the perception of quality and encourage improvements in their educational services. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate students’ perceptions regarding the quality of the Industrial Engineering program at Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL). Referring to the research’s methods, it is a descriptive and quantitative research. It was used bibliographic research and conducted a survey to collect the data. A number of 50 senior students responded the questionnaire. For data analysis, the software R was used to conduct an exploratory analysis and to obtain the descriptive statistics, as well as to plot the boxplot graphs and histograms. The results indicated that the quality dimensions applied to evaluate the faculty members, the extracurricular activities and the quality of education are the greatest weaknesses of the program. In contrast, the dimension related to the quality of the program coordinator was evaluated as satisfactory. Despite that, the program coordinator team still need to act proactively to solve the problems that affect faculty members, teaching and promotion of extracurricular activities. Finally, we pointed out that the challenges inherent to quality in higher education, especially in engineering programs, overcome the intangibility of the educational service with regard to the interaction between teachers and students. Regarding the IE program at UFAL, there are still many improvement opportunities to be implemented, both to comply with the directives of the regulatory bodies and to fulfill the social role of this university, in order to train professionals sufficiently qualified to work in the job market.