GCD Geoscience Communication Discussions GCD Geosci. Commun. Discuss. 2569-7439 Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/gc-2022-16 Improving the Quality of Education in Water Resources Engineering: A Hybrid Fuzzy-AHP-TOPSIS Method Ghorbani Mohammad Kazem 1 Talebbeydokhti Nasser 2 Hamidifar Hossein 3 Samadi Mehrshad 1 Nones Michael https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4395-2637 4 Rezaeitavabe Fatemeh https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6245-242X 5 Heidarifar Shabnam 2 Department of Civil Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran Water Engineering Department, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran Department of Hydrology and Hydrodynamics, Institute of Geophysics Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland Department of Civil Engineering, Ohio University, Ohio, USA 15 03 2023 2023 1 16 Copyright: © 2023 Mohammad Kazem Ghorbani et al. 2023 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://gc.copernicus.org/preprints/gc-2022-16/ The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://gc.copernicus.org/preprints/gc-2022-16/gc-2022-16.pdf

<p>Improving the quality of education in universities can play a prominent role in the development of countries. The purpose of this study is to develop a methodology for assessing the quality of education in Water Resources Engineering, one of the sub-disciplines of Civil Engineering, based on Klein's learning model and using the hybrid fuzzy-AHP-TOPSIS method. Four out of the top ten universities in Iran, including Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT), Shiraz University (SU), and Khajeh Nasir al-Din Toosi University of Technology (KUT) are considered as case studies. First, the weight coefficients were determined by surveying the students in the fuzzy environment using the AHP method, and then these coefficients were transferred to the TOPSIS environment. Finally, the relative closeness of universities (CC) as a performance evaluation criterion in the form of CC (IUST) = 0.54, CC (AUT) = 0.49, CC (SU) = 0.45, and CC (KUT) = 0.39 were obtained. The sensitivity analysis was performed based on the number and type of Klein's qualitative criteria on the model, and Fourier series expansion curves were used to observe the exact behavior of the model and better compare the results. This model of evaluation can have a considerable influence on the education methods improvement in Civil Engineering departments and related fields.</p>