Rehabilitation Engineering Needs Assessment and Curriculum Development for Palestinian Territories

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to assess the specific needs of the Palestinian local job market in the field of rehabilitation engineering in light of the international and European best practices. This needs assessment is the first step towards designing and approving curricula that meet job market requirements, thus, providing the local community with high quality rehabilitation engineers. Several focus groups and questionnaires were used to identify the employability areas and the modules needed to fill in the gaps between currently offered modules and the requirements of rehabilitation engineering. The employability areas were identified, according to importance, to be development, sales, design, manufacturing, service delivery and research. The study analyzed the data to determine the minimum number of credits needed to meet the accreditation requirements for a bachelor degree in engineering, while satisfying the employability areas assessed. By analyzing the study plan of a program, officers can identify the gap, so that they can build recommendations on how to modify this program to match the local job market needs in the field of rehabilitation engineering. There could be a variety of alternative solutions that would satisfy the requirements and thus making it easier and more flexible for Gaza Strip universities to add modules related to their specific conditions. The study showed that a total of 42 modules are needed to satisfy both the institutional academic requirements (credit hours) and the employability area needs.