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system to an ideal state, or in relative terms, by
comparing the system with other competing
systems (if they exist). Requirements offer infor-
mation of what the system's stakeholders want
from that system, whereas system's functions are
entities that describe how the system operates. The
process of planning the performance of a given
system can be run for a single objective-function
or concurrently, for several objective-functions
(Brad, 2008).
When a single objective-function is considered,
it deals with quality issues in most of the cases.
Design for quality is actually the major concern
in the field of engineering course development,
too, as several research papers reveal (Bier &
Cornesky, 2001; Brackin, 2002; Kaminski, Fer-
reira & Theuer, 2004; Koksal & Egitman, 1998;
Kumar & Labib, 2004; Raharjo, Xie, Goh &
Brombacher, 2007; Suliman, 2006; Yeo, 2008).
In education, quality is about satisfying students'
requirements with respect to a given course, as well
as with respect to the whole educational system-in
a broader sense (Koksal & Egitman, 1998; Brad,
2005; Popescu, Brad & Popescu, 2006). However,
there is no relevant research that is reported in
the literature highlighting results about quality
planning of web-based engineering courses; the
published researches being mainly focused on
classical courses.
A web-based engineering course brings
supplementary quality-related requirements than
a classical one. Beyond requirements related to
the course content and structure of the informa-
tion, in the case of web-based courses implicit
requirements become expressed requirements. For
example, interactivity, collaboration, tangibility
are major performance characteristics in designing
a web-based engineering course (Baros, Read &
Verdejo, 2008; Du, Li & Li, 2008; Finger, Gel-
man, Fay & Szczerban, 2005; Hamada, 2008;
Helander & Emami, 2008; Jou, Chuang, Wu &
Yang, 2008; Nedic & Machotka, 2006; Rojko,
Hercoq & Jezemik, 2008).
To plan quality in an educational product,
tools like quality function deployment (QFD) and
analytic hierarchy process (AHP) are often used
(Bier & Cornesky, 2001; Brad, 2005; Kaminski,
Ferreira & Theuer, 2004; Kumar & Labib, 2004;
Ogot & Okudan, 2007; Popescu, Brad & Popescu,
2006; Raharjo, Xie, Goh & Brombacher, 2007;
Suliman, 2006). Basic information about these
tools is further introduced.
About Quality Function Deployment
QFD is a structured planning and communication
methodology consisting of a reunion of methods
and means linked by special algorithms that
together provide a robust way by which a multi-
functional team identifies and transfers the needs
and expectations of the stakeholders through each
stage of system development and implementation
(Brad, 2008; Brad, 2009; Kumar & Labib, 2004).
A QFD-project usually starts with the definition
of stakeholders' requirements about the system
under consideration. From this perspective, it is
important to understand that requirements belong
to various categories, as follows: (a) high-level re-
quirements, which express the vision about system
development along some vectors of competitive-
ness; (b) functional requirements, which express
what actually the system has to do (fundamental
functionalities); (c) performance requirements,
which express the level of performance the system
has to achieve; (d) resource-related requirements,
which express the amount of resources (human,
financial, material, informational) the stakehold-
ers agree to allocate for system development; (e)
design constrains, which express design ideas
that have to be incorporated into the system; (f)
conditional constrains, meaning additional per-
formance requirements in relation to resources,
being generated by the functional requirements;
in this category, conformity requirements are
also included. From innovation point of view,
performance requirements are by far the most
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