IJAEDU- International E-Journal of Advances in Education

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 study. All these, make teaching a burden to the academic staff until UPSI introduced two platforms; MyGuru² 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. MyGuru² 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.