Evaluating the efficiency of the knowledge and skills learned in land preparation workshop course of urbanism discipline in order to carry out urban subdivision plans

Background: Scientific circles have always discussed and researched the concern of adaptation of university education to the needs of the profession in various disciplines. The current research has followed this concern in the field of urbanism in bachelor specifically about the 5th workshop course.



Objectives: This research aims to investigate the effectiveness of the land preparation workshop course of urbanism for graduates of this field in order to carry out subdivision plans in Iran.



The curriculum of many universities has been adapted to respond to the changing needs of employers and urban planning professionals emphasize the inclusion of their desired knowledge, skills and competencies in urban planning education. In the existing curriculum in Iran's educational system, there are three content areas of knowledge, skill and attitude, which lead to the realization of different aspects of planning a lesson. Knowledge is awareness, knowledge and information available to a person. Attitude, as an implicit knowledge, exists in the realm of personal knowledge of each person, cognitively and experientially, and values, beliefs and cultural tendencies are the building blocks of people's attitudes. Skill is the effective application of a person's knowledge and developable abilities that appear in his performance. The educational content needed by urban planners to respond to the needs of the society has been summarized in the three categories of knowledge, skill and value. In the knowledge layer, content and procedural topics are required. In the skill layer, presentation skills, communication skills, design skills, management skills, creativity and analysis skills are mentioned, and in the value layer, social justice, participation, respect for diversity, protection of natural resources and cultural heritage, and professional ethics are mentioned.



Method: In order to achieve the goal of the research, by adopting a qualitative approach, while reviewing the literature in this field and also analyzing the content of the headline approved by the Ministry of Science, with the help of semi-structured and in-depth interviews, the opinions of active graduates of this field in the have been investigated. The findings from the interviews have been content analyzed with the help of MaxQuda software.



Result: Summarizing the opinions of the experts shows that the most important skill weaknesses of the graduates are the weakness in the professional use of the software needed to carry out the plans, the weakness in the required practical skills such as mapping, as well as the weakness in the knowledge of site analysis and in understanding the legal aspects of land separation issues. The solutions provided by the experts are summarized in eleven categories. Most of the solutions presented were about deepening the knowledge needed to carry out subdivision plans, and legal knowledge, transportation knowledge, site analysis knowledge, and urban design knowledge were mentioned in the discussions.



Conclusion: The findings show a range of knowledge and skill weaknesses of urbanism graduates, which hinder their preparation to enter the profession, especially in the field of subdivision plans. The findings of this research can be used both in revising the title of the mentioned course in the curriculum planning office of the Ministry of Science and in reviewing the attitudes of teachers and educational departments towards the approaches adopted in teaching this course.