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This paper describes the process of developing programme educational objectives (PEOs) for the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering programme at Kuwait University, and the process of deployment of these PEOs. Input of the four constituents of the programme, faculty, students, alumni, and employers, is incorporated in the development and update of the PEOs. For each PEO an assessment process is employed where performance measures are defined along with target attainment levels. Results from assessment tools are compared with the target attainment levels to measure performance with regard to the PEOs. The assessment indicates that the results meet or exceed the target attainment levels of the PEOs' performance measures.

This paper describes the process employed by the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering programme at Kuwait University to continuously improve the programme. Using a continuous improvement framework, the paper demonstrates how various qualitative and quantitative analyses methods, such as hypothesis testing and control charts, have been applied to the results of four assessment tools and other data sources to improve performance. Important improvements include the need to reconsider two student outcomes as they were difficult to implement in courses. In addition, through benchmarking and the engagement of Alumni and Employers, key decisions were made to improve the curriculum and enhance employability.

In this work, three different foaming agents were selected and their performance on density, compressive strength, pore structure, and molecular structure of alkali-activated blast furnace slag cellular concrete have been investigated. For this purpose, pre-formed foams based on sodium lauryl sulfate, protein-based foaming agent, and hydrogen peroxide were added to the alkali-activated slag paste with determined activator composition. After curing, density and compressive strength of cellular concretes were evaluated. Also, macroscopic pore size distribution was investigated by image processing technique for studying its relation with density and compressive strength. Results showed that with increasing the amount of foam, the density and the compressive strength decreased due to increases in both the number of pores per area and the pore average size. Samples containing protein-based foam showed higher mechanical strength, which could be due to its effect on the molecular structure of hydration product resulting in a stronger bond and hence higher compressive strength. Key words: cellular concrete, alkali-activated slag, lightweight materials, foaming agents. Dans le cadre de cette etude, trois differents agents moussants ont ete choisis et leur rendement en matiere de densite, de resistance a la compression, de structure de pores et de structure moleculaire du beton cellulaire provenant de laitier de haut fourneau par activation alcaline ont ete examines. A cette fin, les mousses preformees composees de dodecyl sulfate de sodium, d'agent moussant a base de proteines et de peroxyde d'hydrogene ont ete ajoutees a la pate de laitier par activation alcaline a composition activatrice determinee. Apres la periode de cure, la densite et la resistance a la compression des betons cellulaires ont ete evaluees. Aussi, on a examine la repartition de la taille des pores macroscopiques par la technique de traitement d'image afin d'etudier sa relation par rapport a la densite et a la resistance a la compression. Les resultats ont indique qu'en augmentant la quantite de mousse, la densite et la resistance a la compression ont diminue en raison des augmentations du nombre de pores par zone et de la taille moyenne de pores. Les echantillons composes de mousse a base de proteines ont montre une plus grande resistance mecanique qui pourrait etre due a l'effet de la mousse sur la structure moleculaire du produit d'hydratation donnant lieu a un lien plus fort et par consequent a une resistance a la compression plus elevee. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles: beton cellulaire, laitier par activation alcaline, materiaux legers, agents moussants., Introduction The use of lightweight or low density materials have particular importance in construction industry in terms of structural loadbearing, acoustic and thermal insulation properties (Arellano et al. 2010; Abdulkareem [...]