THE EFFECTIVE COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES - PROGRAM OUTCOMES (CO-PO) MEASUREMENT AND ASSESSMENT METHODS

Outcome Based Education (OBE) is a comprehensive approach to manage and control the process of teaching and learning that is focused to produce students who have demonstrated effective learning outcomes. Evaluation and measurement are two important aspects that are emphasized in OBE to ensure that the course learning outcomes (CO) and subsequent results of the (PO) is achieved. Thus, a method that combines two methods of direct and indirect assessment has been developed for this purpose. Indirect method of the Student Self-Assessment (SSA) and the direct method of evaluation using the summative final grade e (GA) were used in this study. SSA is an instrument to assess student achievement in self-CO targets outlined in each course. At the Department of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Systems, SSA has been used to measure the achievement of CO and thus indirectly linked to the achievement of program outcomes (PO). This paper seeks to examine the effectiveness of the SSA and the achievement of the instrument as a method for measuring the performance of GA and PO-CO. Seven courses offered in semester 2 2008/2009 were randomly selected for the study. SSA response analysis and comparison with the GA indicates that this method is less suitable to measure and evaluate the performance of CO-PO. However, a combination of both are suitable to monitor and evaluate the administration of a course in which a large difference ( 10%) between the results of the final SSA with GA can be used as an indicator of the need to improve on the handling of the course. In conclusion, an improvement is needed to ensure that the CO-PO can be measured and evaluated in a more objective and direct manner.