Quantitative Measurement of Students PO Attainments for Taylor's University Engineering Programmes

Abstract

As engineering education shifts its focus from the traditional content and time-based method into the student- centred and outcome-based method, more detailed and rigorous assessments of student's learning outcomes are required. In outcome-based education (OBE), the focus is on what students are expected to know and be able to do by the time of graduation. Aside from many tasks including preparing teaching materials, examination papers, laboratory sheets, markings papers, doing research, and some administrative support tasks, lecturers are now required to do intensive OBE assessments and Continual Quality Improvement (CQI) planning and implementation for every module they handle.This paper presents the details of a quantitative measurement of the learning outcomes (LO) and programme outcomes (PO) in the module level and up to the programme level to assess the student's PO attainments upon graduation. An End-of-Semester Assessment Tool (ESAT) was developed to assist the lecturers in this OBE assessments and CQI process. ESAT is a macro-enabled software package that automatically calculates the students’ individual LO and PO attainments based on their respective module's assessments mark. A LO or a PO is said to be achieved if the student's total assessment mark is greater than or equal to a defined key performance indicator (KPI) related to that LO or PO. ESAT results from all modules are then stored in the students LO and PO database system to generate the cohort's, and the individual student's PO attainments. ESAT results in the programme level offers varied results that describes the student’ overall PO performance. Periodic results can be generated for all students that can be used for student's CQI action.