Evaluation of Students’ Learning Outcome: An Experience Sharing Teaching Agribotany at Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia

IJAEDU- International E-Journal of Advances in Education, Vol. I, Issue 2, August 2015 EVALUATION OF STUDENTS’ LEARNING OUTCOME: AN EXPERIENCE SHARING TEACHING AGRIBOTANY AT SULTAN IDRIS EDUCATION UNIVERSITY, MALAYSIA Mai Shihah Abdullah* *Dr., Senior Lecturer, Department of Agriculture, Faculty of Technical and Vocational Education, Sultan Idris Education University, MALAYSIA, Abstract UPSI is dedicated to become the Leading Education University in Malaysia’s tertiary education system and has moved towards Outcome-based Education (OBE) approach since 2008. The ultimatum of the OBE focuses on the graduate attributes or program learning outcomes (PLO) upon completion of an academic program. However, while colleagues from other Higher Education Providers are sceptical about the implementation of OBE with the perception that it requires lots of time and effort, but with the integration of technology in teaching and learning at UPSI, Course Learning Outcome (CLO) calculation is very handy. The prescribed PLOs are first aligned to the all CLOs designed into the curriculum. Nevertheless, teaching and learning strategies and supporting facilities are also predetermined to support the intended outcomes. Students’ achievements based on their performance in assessments are to be measured throughout the 2 study. All these, make teaching a burden to the academic staff until UPSI introduced two platforms; MyGuru where course outline including the course learning outcomes (CLO), teaching materials, assessments and student-instructor online communication such as forum are uploaded and managed by the course instructor. 2 MyGuru is linked to the second platform, the University Integrated Management System (UIMS) where all assessments (formative and summative) data are analysed. At the end of the semester the evaluation of each course learning outcome mapped to the students’ performance is displayed. In this paper, the author would like to share her experience teaching Agribotany, a course in Bachelor of Education (Agricultural Science) with Honours which was made easy by using these platforms. Thus, when the full cycle of a program is completed, CLOs of all courses which are mapped to Program Outcomes (PO) are analysed. The achievement of the Program Educational Objective (PEO) is the reflection of the quality of graduate of a program. It will further use in the Continual Quality Improvement (CQI) process. Keywords: Course Learning Outcome, Program Learning Outcome, Sultan Idris Education University (UPSI) 1 INTRODUCTION William Spady in 1994 has developed an outcome-based education (OBE), an education system that emphasizes on outcomes measurement rather than the inputs of the curriculum covered. Outcomes include knowledge, skills and attitudes. The desired outcomes are feasible when teaching and learning activities are well organized, planned and continuously improved (Spady, 1998; Spady and Marshall, 1991). OBE has also been described as a process of clearly focusing and organizing curriculum, instruction and assessment essential to enable students to do successfully at the exit point, with desirable criteria should be displayed. http://ijaedu.ocerintjournals.org 95 IJAEDU- International E-Journal of Advances in Education, Vol. I, Issue 2, August 2015 OBE is introduced and being implemented in Malaysia, both at the Public and Private Universities and Colleges since 2005. The paradigm shift is driven by Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) to ensure the academic programs, the delivery system and the assessment strategies will produce graduates equipped with high quality knowledge and skills. Assessment is the tool to reflect the achievement of PLOs as well as the process of continuous quality improvement (CQI). Although it has been introduced for almost 10 years ago, but many lecturers find that the assessments for Student Learning Outcome (SLO), Course Learning Outcome (CLO), Program Learning Outcome (PLO) are rather burdensome and lots of energy is invested to keep track the performance of OBE for a particular Program. By all means, it has to be done continuously for CQI and to ensure the program is awarded with MQA accreditation. The whole process of SLO, CLO and PLO assessments are reflected to be very tedious among lecturers; for example the mapping of CLO to PLO, the mapping of course assessment to CLO and the most cumbersome is the calculation of SLO, CLO and PLO. These are due to insufficient guide and unreadiness of lecturers to adapt to the newly introduced OBE. At Sultan Idris Education University (UPSI), the same scenario occurred when undergraduate and post graduate programs curricular were transformed to the needs of the Malaysian Qualification Framework, introduced by MQA in 2008. The implementation is enforced on all the 37 programs offered by 9 faculties which include the Faculty of Technical and Vocational Education. There are three academic programs at this faculty, including the Bachelor of Education (Agricultural Science) with Honours. In this program, the curriculum structure comprises of five components with minimum graduating credit of 130; Higher Education Provider Courses (10-15%), Education Foundation (17-25%), Discipline Core (28-36%), Professional Practice (7-12%) and Elective (related to discipline core (15-18%) or open (7-10%). Although at the primordial stage was not a smooth sailing journey, but sufficient information is provided by the University, added with the necessary foundation; conceptual understanding, planning, implementation, assessments/evaluations on which the CQI can be implemented upon, OBE took its maiden ride. Division of Academic Development and Quality consists of Professional Development and Talent Unit takes responsibility to develop, monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of academic programs while Focus Research Unit plans continuous quality improvement on the effectiveness of strategies, system and methodologies of academic management. Since 2010, these units collaborate with the Information Technology Unit and progressively connecting the academic delivery and the assessment tools to a system epithet as UPSI Integrated Management System (UIMS). The measurement of achievement of CLO is a done prior to PLO, which later determines if the PEO is met. In this paper VAB3013 Agribotany, a newly introduced course designed for Bachelor of Education (Agricultural Science) with Honours program is used as an example. This paper is also aimed to share the achievement of UIMS to simplify the process of Student Learning Outcome Monitoring (SLOM). Eventually Course Learning Outcome (CLOM) is automatically calculated. The performances of all CLOMs in a program which have been mapped to the PLOs are analysed. Ultimately the Program Educational Objective (PEO) performance of the Bachelor of Education (Agricultural Science) with Honours graduates is evaluated. The tools; SLOM, CLOM, PLO and PEO are developed by UPSI in order to support th (...truncated)