The role and position of graduates in the process of evaluating humanities curricula in top universities in Iran and the world in order to design a desired scale

Improving the curriculum of academic disciplines requires to consider the perspectives and needs of the curriculum constituencies. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of graduates in evaluating the curricula of the top universities in Iran and the world in order to design a specific curriculum evaluation scale for graduates. A mixed sequential -exploratory research in the form of instrument design was chosen for this study. Statistical population consisted of six groups. The first group included faculty members and curriculum experts at top universities, the second group was officials of educational planning centers at top universities and the third group was relevant officials in the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology from which a total of 30 people were interviewed. The fourth group consisted of the worldchr('39')s selected universities, the fifth group included masterchr('39')s degree program instructors in some humanities disciplines at top universities, and the sixth group consisted of 30 employed graduates. Data collection tool was semi-structured interview, documents analysis, and specific graduate- researcher-made scale. The validity of the interview questions was content-based that used the opinions of ten academic experts. The reliability of the interview data was done through re-implementation of the interviews and the use of peer group as well as the validity of the graduate scale in terms of contents and validation using Lawshe coefficient. The internal correlation of variables was estimated through Cronbachchr('39')s alpha. The findings showed that the worldchr('39')s leading universities use the views of all constituencies such as faculty members, students, graduates and employers to improve and revise curricula. In comparison, in Iranian universities, graduates, except in exceptional cases, do not participate much in the evaluation of curricula, and even experts consider the importance and necessity of graduate participation lower than other constituencies. Using the obtained data, a scale with 62 phrases and 7 open-ended questions was developed to evaluate the curriculum from the perspective of graduates.