Proceedings of 2009 IEEE Student Conference on Research and Development (SCOReD 2009),
16-18 Nov. 2009, UPM Serdang, Malaysia
Study on the Relationship between the Workload and Current Implemented Learning System of the Students in the Dept. of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering, UPM. Wen Jian Ong, Chee Kyun Ng, Mohd Azrin Mohd Azau, and N. K. Noordin Department of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
[email protected], {mpnck, mdazrin, nknordin}@eng.upm.edu.my
Abstract—Outcomes-based education (OBE) system is a motivated and reformed education system. OBE has been implemented in Bachelor of Engineering (B. Eng) programme offered by the Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia since 2006. The learning process focuses on measuring the students’ outcomes empirically. To contrast to OBE, the conventional learning system is primarily focuses on the resources available to students and to lecturers. . In this paper, we present the relationship between the workload and the current implemented OBE learning system. Suggestions to improve the current OBE learning systems are also presented in order to enhance the learning method to benefit every entity involve in this system A survey was conducted to the student in the Department of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering. Most of the respondents do understand and aware about the concept of OBE since it was implemented. From the survey, more than 80 % of the respondents aware the implementation of OBE in the department and 75% of them agree that OBE system has increased their workload.
II.
The respondents who participated in this study are the students from the Department of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia who are in 2008/2009 academic year. This paper discusses the findings on the students’ awareness and understanding regarding the principal concept of OBE, their perception on the current teaching system, workload given by the academicians and also the implementation feasibility of OBE for the final year students. The respondents will rate in a scale of 1 that indicates strongly disagree to 5 indicates strongly agree with 3 represents remain neutral. III.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Fig. 1 shows the percentage of the respondents’ awareness about the concept of OBE and the implementation in their learning system. From 132 respondents surveyed, 116 of them are well aware of the concept, and the remaining 16 students are still having no firm knowledge in OBE implementation. Most of the students in the Department are well aware about the concept of OBE. OBE has been well implemented in the department and well explained to the students. The remaining students who still do not acknowledge OBE in their learning system have the thought that this system has shifted the teaching responsibility of lecturers to the students.
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I.
SURVEY PREPARATION
INTRODUCTION
Outcomes-based education (OBE) has been introduced and being assessed by the Malaysia Quality Assurance Department, Ministry of Higher Education in all Malaysian Universities since 2005 [1, 2]. The Department of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) has taken early initiative to implement the OBE system in all of the courses offered since the academic year 2006 / 2007. This approach has influential implications towards the design of curriculum and the contents of the courses offered by the Department of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering (CCSE) [3, 4]. OBE is a student oriented learning where the system, in which emphasizes on students’ soft skills development. In parallel with this, the role of the lecturers is refined to become facilitators instead of teachers [5, 8].
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Figure 1. The awareness of the students towards the concept of OBE.
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The respondents think there exist a trend the where the role of lecturers in delivering knowledge is lessened in this reformed system. Fig. 2 shows that from 132 respondents, 67.4% of them agree that the implementation of OBE system has lessened the role of the lecturers, 25.8% neither agree nor disagree with this subject matter. 6.8% of the students stand to differ with the rest of the respondents. They acknowledge the roles of the lecturers are not merely teaching and giving assignments to them, but the lecturers are now acting as mentors and facilitators in their learning process. If OBE is to be implemented, the lecturers should spend additional hours outside the class period to assist the students. This is to ensure that the students will have a good level of understanding in certain topics and to be able to cope up with OBE learning system.
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Figure 4. Students' opinion about the assignments given by the lecturers.
The assignments, which enable the students to exercise data mining and increase their level of technical competency, vary in level of difficulties. However, reasonable time has to be allocated for the students to solve the problems assigned in order not to burden them. Typically, the assignments are given to the students in the middle of the semester and therefore leaving the students’ short period of time to finish the tasks. The students think that this is an additional load to them as undergraduate students. Fig. 5 shows the respondents’ opinion about the burden of the students from workload such as assignments, coursework and projects. 75% of the respondents agree that they are burden from the workload with the remaining 20.5% neither agree nor disagree and 4.5% of the respondents disagree. These results show that, although the assignments given by the lecturers are able to increase the technical competency among the students, they indirectly increase the students’ workload. In each semester, the students are required to take between 12 and 18 credit hours of courses per semester. This implies that the assignment given by the lecturers overload the students and do not match with the credit hours awarded to them.
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Figure 3. Students' opinion about peer teaching and collaborative learning.
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Fig. 4 depicts the students’ opinion regarding the assignments given by the lecturers. The lecturers formulate the assignments based on real problems and directly contribute towards achieving the objectives for each courses offered by the department. From the students’ opinion whether the assignment given by the lecturers able to increase the level of technical competency, 67.4% found out the assignments help them to broaden their technical ability while 11.4% disagree. The given assignments require them to utilize modern engineering tools and they have to intelligently harvest the information from vast of resources such as the Internet, books, magazines, journals and scientific articles. This teaching style leads to most of the respondents to agree that the assignments given increase their technical competency.
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One of the OBE main objectives is to promote peer-to-peer teaching and collaborative learning among the students to enrich the student centered learning process. By doing so, the students are divided into smaller groups; formally or informally, where they are required to solve problem-based questions given by the lecturers. With this, the student can help each other not only to solve the task given when the groups are formed. In addition to this, the students are at advantage of sharing the knowledge among themselves and less dependent on the lecturers. Fig. 3 shows that 65.2% of the respondents, agree that this learning system induces peer-to-peer teaching and collaborative learning, which uphold the student centered learning. 23.5% chose to neither agree nor disagree and the other 11.3% chose to oppose this argument.
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Figure 2. The opinion on lessened the role of lecturers.
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PROPOSED IMPROVEMENT
From the results presented, it is clearly shown that the students are getting extra load from the workload such as assignments, coursework and project given by the academicians especially for the undergraduate student. For the undergraduate programme, the assignments given by the lecturer per semester should be appropriate so that the students will be getting benefits from the implementation of OBE. The assignments given by the academicians should be given by the academicians to the students at the beginning of the semester so that the students are well prepared. In this subject matter, we proposed a way that could brings benefit to everyone by introducing the Project Based Teaching (PBT) to integrate with the current implemented OBE system. Project work is often seen as fostering student centered learning, where the students are required to actively participate in the class, work in a group while the lecturers are only the facilitators. With the current implemented learning system, the Department only relies on the Final Year Project as the vehicle for developing both technical and generic skills. In this case, the second test, which often held on week 10 of each semester, should be replaced by these three types of project work based on the different level of freedom that the students have [10]:
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Figure 7. Final year student's opinion about the current learning system allows them to spend more time on FYP.
The survey conducted for the final year students regarding the workload given by the lecturers shows that the assignments given to them have increased their understanding and technical skills to a better level. Fig. 6 shows that out 37 of 132 respondents are in their final year of studies, 59.5% of the final year students disagree that the workload given by the lecturers is appropriate so that they will not lose focus on their final year academic project (FYP). 24.3% neither agree nor disagree and 16.2% chose to agree with that statement. For potential employers, the FYP is a litmus test of students interests their aptitudes. Therefore, the final year students should have more time allocated for their FYP and reduce the workload on the course projects and assignments. In addition too, Fig. 7 portrays that 64.9% of the respondents from this group of students disagree that the current learning system allows them to spend more time to focus on the FYP. From the students’ opinion, FYP needs them to put more concentration, as they need more time to do the literature review, perform a series of experiment to complete the project in the given one year period. In addition, the students feel that they need more thesis related programme or courses instead of the assignments given by the lecturers.
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Figure 5. Respondents' opinion about the burden of students from workload.
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Assignment project where the problem, the tools (methods) and outcomes are all well known in advance and the supervisor can fully control these. Subject project where the subject is well known and students have freedom to choose either a problem within the subject or methods for a pre-defined problem. Problem project where even problem itself may not be well defined. Thus, students need to first fully specify their own interpretation of the problem and the outcomes of the project, and then select or developing suitable methods for this implementation.
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A series of test, in the point of view of the students, seems to bring extra burden to them and this lead them to feel that they have a burden from the assignment given so that they will not lose concentration in the preparation of the test, which is
Scale Figure 6. Final year students' opinion about the assignment able to increase their level of understanding and technical skills.
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one of the method used by the academicians to grade them. By introducing the PBT in the current OBE learning system, this definitely would bring benefits to the students. Through this system, students gained practical experience through in-house projects and at the same time providing students with the necessary skills in advance of their undertaking the Final Year Projects.
V.
CONCLUSIONS
OBE is a reformed education system. However, the implementation must be carefully conducted. This system may benefit the students in term of developing the soft skill and technical knowledge but it may also introduce extra load to the students. The lecturers may seem to have lesser responsibility to teach but they have to be knowledgeable and fair in giving assignments to the students. Selecting appropriate projects or problem-based tasks are not an easy job. The tasks must reflect the principal of OBE and in parallel must enrich the students learning skills. The syllabus has to be dynamically designed and content should not be limited one time reviewed only. Instead, the content should be allowed to change to suit the cotemporary issue.
For the final year students, more time shall be allocated to them so that they would not lose focus on their Final Year Academic Projects. As the final year project is a litmus test of students' interests and aptitudes for the potential employers, more time shall be given to them so that they can produce a quality work and increase their competency in their respective engineering field. In this way, the students would be more attractive to the employers. In this point of view, we propose that for the final year students, the academicians should reduce the amount of coursework to them so that the students are allowed to spend more time to focus on their final year projects. The amount of coursework given to them shall be appropriate according to the credit hour allocated for each courses.
REFERENCES Anon. Draft 8th Edition Civil Engineering Curriculum and syllabus. Civil Engineering Department, Universiti Putra Malaysia;2004 [2] Malaysian Council of Engineering, Deans/Institution of Engineers Malaysia (2000) Malaysian Engineering Education Model – Educating Future Industry Leaders, Report;2000 [3] M. Johari, Malaysian Engineering Education Model for the Next Millennium. In Colloquium on the Malaysian Engineering Education Model for the Next Millennium, 5 August, Putrajaya, Selangor, 1999 [4] A.A.A Aziz, M.J. Megat Mohd Nor, A.A. Abang Ali, M. S. Jaafar, ”A Malaysian Outcome-based Engineering Education Model”, International Journal of Engineering and Technology, Vol 2, No1, pp: 14 – 21, 2005 [5] J. Fowler and A. Gudmundsso: “ Group facilitation: a case study of student-centered autonomous learning; HERDSA; 2003; pp: 1-9 [6] M. Hesson, K.F. Shad; “A Student-Centered Learning Model”; American Journal of Applied Sciences; 2007; pp: 628-636 [7] A. S. Kashani, S. Soheili, Z.N. Hatmi; “Teaching English to Students of Medicine: A Student-Centered Approach”; The Asian ESP Journal; Volume 2; Article 5; November 2006; Page(s) 1 [8] B. Bender; Student-centered learning: EDUCASE; Volume 2003, Issue 11; pp: 1-12; May 27, 2003. [9] R. Hashim, “Implementation Outcome Based Education Using Project Based Learning at University of Malaya”, European Journal of Scientific Research, ISSN 1450-216X Vol. 26 No. 1 (2009), pp 80-86 [10] K.J. McDermott, A. Nafalski, O.Gol,” Problem-based Teaching in Engineering Programs.
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Alternatively, the course offered by the Department also can be reviewed. The courses such as Engineers and Society, Seminar, Workshop and other university pre- requisite courses shall only be introduced during the final year of studies. For the first year to the third year of studies, the students shall only focuses on their technical subjects related to the Engineering Programme so that they would have an adequate technical skills when the comes to final year. In this way, this would allocate more time to the final year students to concentrate on their final year project, rather than coursework as the seminar, workshop and Engineers and Society courses only develop their professionalism and ethnics as an engineer, introduce them to the latest technology in an engineering field , develop their presentation and writing skills. By introducing non-technical subjects during the final year, this would help the students to produce a good quality projects which can bring benefits to both university and the students itself. In addition too, the course evaluation on the nontechnical subjects also can be done during the student’s final project presentation, as their project presentation requires them to present their idea, writing skills, ethics and professionalism as an engineer to the examiner.
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