Emerging from the web
PUBLIC universities need no longer carry out the Integrated Cumulative Grade Point Average (iCGPA) system, effective immediately. This directive came from the Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik who recently announced that iCGPA is not compulsory in public universities.
The iCGPA grading system, which covers students’ academic performance, as well as professional ability acquired throughout their years at university, was implemented in 2015.
The five pioneering public universities which implemented iCGPA are Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan and Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP).
However, with the new development, public universities have the option to give leniency to any of their faculties should they decide to carry on with the system.
To date, some public universities through their senates have made their decision to forgo the iCGPA while other universities have yet to make a decision.
For many universities, the directive will not effect them as they have been accessing students’ performance using outcomebased education (OBE) via the constructive alignment (CA) approach under the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) requirement.
UKM Quality Centre director Associate Professor Dr Roziah Sidik said OBE is an educational philosophy where the teaching and learning approach is based on a predetermined set of expected outcomes.
The term “outcome” refers to a set of values or attributes acquired by a student upon completion of a certain level of learn.
In OBE, there are three aspects — Programme Educational Objectives (PEO), Programme Learning Outcomes (PLO) and Course Learning Outcomes.
“For example, PLO indicates the attribute that a student should have upon graduation while PEO describes the expected achievements of graduates in their career and professional life a few years after graduation (within four to five years).
“PEO achievement can indirectly reflect the impact of a programme,” added Roziah.
UMP Centre for Academic Innovation and Competitiveness director Dr Mohd Rusllim Mohamed said the crux of iCGPA is the implementation of the OBE and CA approach which remains valid. The option is to do away with the “spider web” which displays leadership, communication, entrepreneurial, social and critical thinking skills.
“The iCGPA result must be a true representation of students’ ability rather than do injustice to them.”
Sharing the same sentiment, acting Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia deputy vice-chan- cellor (academic and international) Professor Datuk Dr Mohd Marzuki Mustafa said a few issuesneedtoberectifiedbeforetheiCGPAcan become a formal result to be published for the industry.
“For instance, not all academic programmes have fully adopted the OBE and not all staff have fully understood the concept. Even though a university adopts the OBE, nonetheless issues on understanding CA still need to be solved.
“If the lecturer fails to do CA as planned and in a correct way, it will do injustice to the student since his result displays false information about his achievement via the iCGPA spider web,” said Mohd Marzuki.
Rusllim said the decision to continue iCGPA depends on each university’s senate but the implementation of OBE and CA is still a must to comply with accreditation requirements.
“If they opt to use the iCGPA spider web report, they have to ensure the correctness of the implementation of OBE and CA approach by every academic staff.
“Continuous training to ensure all academic staff teach and evaluate students in accordance with the teaching plan is a must,” he added.
iCGPA is one of the initiatives under Shift 1 of the Malaysia Education Blueprint 20152025 (Higher Education), also known as the Higher Education Blueprint. The concept has been explored since 2009 with the methodology development taking place since 2011 via collaboration between experts from public universities including UKM and UiTM.
Throughout this period, the MQA has advised on standards, with the ministry (Higher Education) facilitating the overall process.
The then Higher Education Minister Datuk
The iCGPA result must be a true representation of students’ ability rather than do injustice to them. MOHD RUSLLIM MOHAMED
UMP Centre for Academic Innovation and Competitiveness director
Seri Idris Jusoh said one of the key challenges of any higher education system, including Malaysia’s, is to produce graduates who not only excel in their fields of study (academically), but are also equipped with the necessary soft skills (such as English proficiency), knowledge (of the world at large, the sciences and arts), values (ethics, patriotism, and spirituality), leadership abilities (including the love of volunteerism), and the ability to think critically (accepting diverse views, innovation and problem solving). The immediate goal is to solve the graduate-employer expectation mismatch and enable our graduates to find meaningful employment. We also want our graduates to become entrepreneurs and create job opportunities for others. “The long-term goal is about achieving self-realisation, societal prosperity, national development and global prominence.”
FRAMEWORK
In Malaysia, the importance of the role of higher education and training institutions in contributing to the nation’s social, economic and political development through the production of quality citizens, a highly skilled and talented workforce and new knowledge has been unambiguously acknowledged.
These developments have been guided broadly by the National Education Philosophy.
Empowering the actualisation of the policy is the Higher Education Blueprint which outlines the strategies, plans, key performance indicators, responsible departments, institutions and agencies within a number of strong enabling legal frameworks.
In 2007, the milestone decision, agreed by all stakeholders, to develop a national qualifications framework and establish the Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF) was made.
“The main role of MQA is to implement the MQF as a basis for quality assurance of higher education and as the reference point for the criteria and standards for national qualifications.
“MQA is responsible for monitoring and overseeing the quality assurance practices and accreditation of national higher education,” said Roziah.
She said the preparation of learning outcomes needs to be in line with the second edition of MQF in which five clusters of learning outcomes have been outlined (
ics).
“The term ‘constructive’ is used in the OBE approach because the model is based on the psychology of constructivism of which there are several kinds, but what they have in common is the idea that knowledge is constructed through the activities of the learner.
“The key to good teaching then is to get the learner to engage in those activities that are most appropriate to the intended learning outcomes in question.
“Meanwhile, the term ‘alignment’ is used because both teaching and assessment need to be aligned with the intended learning outcomes.”
Acting University of Malaya deputy vice-chancellor (academic and international) Professor Dr Kamila Ghazali said the move to provide more autonomy to universities is widely lauded. This includes the autonomy to conduct programmes as they see fit for the purpose of providing the best possible methodologies for teaching and learning as well as assess- ment.
UM has embarked on using the OBE approach for all its academic programmes.
“All courses must identify their graduate attributes through programme learning outcomes and the university insists that these attributes must be holistic and balanced.
“In UM, the iCGPA is an additional assessment tool to assist in the constructive alignment of the implementation of the programme curriculum.
“Even if the use of iCGPA is dropped, the existing OBE concept will be retained. There is emphasis on the constructive alignment of the programme curriculum plus the OBE approach will be able to identify avenues for quality improvement.”
Rusllim said some universities use the iCGPA report for the student to know their weakness and improve himself.
“At UMP, iCGPA reports are not meant to be published for industries.
“For now, it is a status quo since all our efforts were not meant for iCGPA. We started all the work for accreditation for the purpose of full implementation of OBE and CA as well as to ensure the success of our strategic planning for 2011-2016.
“We already had all the systems in place as well as reports of OBE attainment when the former minister announced the iCGPA in 2015. We just needed to change our results from bar chart to spider web to meet the requirement of iCGPA.
“It is most important to ensure UMP provides a very good academic environment for the student to have the best academic experience at university for him to grow as a learned individual and to contribute the best to the betterment of society,” added Rusllim.
Roziah said that to ensure the achievement of learning outcomes emphasised in OBE, the lecturer needs to design teaching and assessment so that they are aligned with the expected results.
“When this process is properly implemented, it enhances teaching and learning, and the quality of both lecturer and student. The eligibility to become a lecturer is often associated with expertise in a particular field and that the field is often not a realm of education.
“Not all lecturers have professional qualifications in the field of education. With this background, many challenges will be faced in implementing OBE.
“Other challenges include aligning teaching methods, as well as assessment, with the intended learning outcomes; designing learning activities that can optimise student chances of achieving learning outcomes and getting the student to engage in those activities.
“The practice is that many universities provide training reinforcement exercises to provide these skills to lecturers.”
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