Congratulations! Dr. Darabi to Play a Major Instructional Design Role in a Multi-Million Dollar Project

Congratulations! Dr. Aubteen Darabi to Play a Major Instructional Design Role in a Multi-Million Dollar Project Aimed at Realigning Philippine’s Universities’ Engineering Curricula with the Needs of Industry and Business 

Research Triangle International was the recipient of a $32 million grant from the US Agency for International Development aimed at Science, Technology, Research, and Innovation Development (STRIDE). Among the collaborating universities for securing this grant, the FSU’s Learning System Institutes (LSI) received $1.4 million of funding to improve the Philippines’ workforce development initiatives and realign their universities’ engineering curricula to be more responsive to the industry needs.

As the Co-PI of this project Dr. Darabi is leading the project’s instructional design efforts, the results of which will feed into the establishment of a Professional Science Master’s Degree. Dr. Jeff Milligan of LSI, the PI of the project, and other faculty from FSU are leading the workforce development efforts and establishment of career centers across Philippines.

This fall Dr. Darabi visited four of the major universities in manila and introduced the engineering deans, chairs, and teaching faculty to the concepts and principles of Human Performance Technology (HPT) and the Instructional Systems and presented a framework for this initiative. Three of the universities agreed to participate in the project: De La Salle University, Technological Institute of the Philippines, and Ateneo de Manila University.

Between now and his next visit in March of 2016, Dr. Darabi will be working with the faculty and administrators of the participating universities to identify and analyze programs’ courses, competencies, learning and performance objectives, instructional strategies and sequence of the course content as currently offered. In March 2015, Darabi will revisit the programs and conducts several workshops leading the teaching faculty and the industry experts to review the results of this analysis for identified programs. In these workshops, considering the desired marketable qualifications of programs’ graduates, the faculty/industry teams will revise the curricula according to requirements of the job market and industry needs.

An evaluation and assessment workshop has been tentatively scheduled for August of 2015 to assess the universities implementation of the revised curricula and its progress.