Despite huge amounts of money spend on
education, Malaysians perceive that our graduates are of decreasing quality.
Based on the iCGPA system that is based on
OBE, outcome based education, is blamed for putting more burden on lecturers
which resulted in poor quality students because less time is spent on teaching.
But teaching is never the reason why
graduates are of low quality in the view of employers or the public. No matter
how much time is spent on teaching, if low quality students who do not know
fundamentals, no interest in learning to the point of submitting assignments
and if willing to submit, only know how to plagiarise unchecked, are allowed to
graduate, the quality of the graduates will still be low.
The quality of the graduates DEPEND ON THE
EVALUATORS, not TEACHERS. The most important function of a teacher is actually
not just to teach but to determine who are of sufficient standard to graduate. This
had been the case since the Silat and Kung Fu teachers. They just demonstrate
how to perform some functions, but most of the time, they just observe how the
students perform in order to give feedback on their performance. Students must
take the effort to learn the skills by themselves by practising.
Many Malaysians will say that it does not
happen in Malaysia but it is very common indeed. Many cases where the entire
class got first class honours, with CGPA above 3.5. Why not? If all questions
are known, and students are even allowed to bring laptops to the examination
hall and the teacher openly help students answer examination questions, right
in front of other students.
Just look at the quality of our High School
leavers? Who allow them to graduate despite not having basic fundamentals? The
examining bodies of course. Despite getting high scores, their standards are
still low as determined by international observers. The number of students that are determined to
have passed our public examinations keep on increasing year by year. It appears
as though the standard of teaching increases every year. And yet, Universities,
Employers and International observers, determine that the standard of education
in Malaysia has not increased that much.
And yet, the percentage of students who
pass the minimum competency levels keep on increasing. Refer to page 100 of
this UNESCO report. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002297/229719E.pdf For
PMR, it used to be only 50%, in 2000, to over 60% in 2013. https://moe.gov.my/images/KPM/UKK/LAPORAN-TAHUNAN-KPM-2016-ilovepdf-compressed.pdf
In Jadual 1, page 107 of the above report,
the average grade for SPM keep on increasing from 5.04 to 5.11. It shows that
our education system is supposed to have improved. Or does it?
Can we increase the average grade to 7 in
2019? Why not? Just lower the marking marks for these grades. These are just
grades. If you really want to be honest, reveal all the marks lah.
You say it is not necessary because grades
are subjective because questions vary in difficulties. Let the employers decide
for themselves. Raw data is more honest than any messaged grades. I got 88% for
my primary 6 examinations in 1969. If they can do it in 1969 for primary
schools, why not do it for all examinations today?
The grading system is designed to sort out
the qualifications of students. They are not designed to determine the standard
of education. They can be messaged in order to satisfy a criterion. If you want
the average grade to be 7, then adjust the grading systems to reflect this
requirement.
If you want to lower the standard of our
students, then lower the lowers for the grades so that almost everybody will
get an average of grade 7. If you want to increase the standard of education,
then increase the grading mark such that the average is just 3, so that many
students fail to graduate.
Then those who graduate are of much higher
standard. Those who do not graduate, will be required to repeat, until they achieve
the desirable standard. This was what happened during the colonial days. This
is what needs to be done if we honestly want to have HIGH QUALITY GRADUATES.
The motivation to learn is far more
important to the quality of teaching. Good teachers are good as guidance only.
Good teachers are experts in their fields so that they can determine the
correct answers for the problems, not that they can explain their subjects
well.
If we have public examinations, as for our
SPM and STPM, we do not need good teachers at all. Let students take the
examinations. Many excellent students managed to score 17 A by studying
themselves. I myself, managed to get 4As in GCE A level, in one year, of a two
year course, by studying by myself. I was not alone. Another Malaysian also
managed to pass the GCE A level examinations by studying by herself as well.
This is not a strange practise because many
competency tests are already carried out without requiring any teacher to teach
them, such as GRE examination, SAT, TOEFL, driving license, Cisco competency
tests and Linux competency tests. Students are allowed to take these tests by
studying themselves, or self-learning. So lecturers and teachers should be
tasked as testers, not spoon feeders who are required to pass students. This is
the current mentality of our education administrators.
That is why, for effective teachers and
lecturers, time spent on the iCGPA system is far more useful in increasing the
quality of teaching because we are supposed to allow students who achieve a
rounded competency, to graduate, instead of just specialised graduates.
Even here, it is up to the employers to
decide who should graduate, given the iCGPA data. For the Board of Engineers of
Malaysia, it requires graduates to have sufficient knowledge of ethics (PO8)."Apply
ethical principles and commit to professional ethics and responsibilities and
norms of engineering practice".
Read the requirement carefully. Does it
mention about being ethical? Do we need to measure how ethical the graduate is?
Not at all. Just apply ethical principles and commit or want to be ethical.
That is all.
Do high ranking universities also have this
PO? They do, if they want to comply with the Washington Accord agreement which
USA, UK, Singapore, Australia and many others agree to. http://www.abet.org/global-presence/mutual-recognition-agreements/engineering-washington-accord/
https://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/427182
(Is the iCGPA really ill-conceived?)
https://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/429170 (Is the iCGPA really ill-conceived?
A rebuttal) That is why comments such as the above are just silly. They just do
not know what iCGPA is all about. Worse, they implement the iCGPA wrongly,
making their work so much harder. For example, when measuring the PO for
ethics, which is PO8, we can use one subject, called Ethics and Law in order to
measure whether students manage to achieve the standard required by the
Washington Accord, in PO8. If you want to simplify your work, just use the
whole marks for this subject as the mark for PO8. It is not accurate, but
sufficient. What if the student fail in this subject? Should we fail the
student in PO8 as well? If you have one subject, you have no choice. That is
why, we should have other subjects or circumstances in order to measure.
Our method is to break it into two CO,
course outcomes, for the subject Ethics and Law for Engineers. One outcome is
measured using exams, the other using Case Studies, i.e. assignment based,
backed by Turnitin anti-plagiarism software. We also attempted two more
circumstances, such as attendances in selected subjects and marks for proper
citation in Final Year Projects. These are weak indicator of commitment to
Ethics but it gives a measure of backup or support.
That is why, for each PO, it is better, but
not compulsory to have at least 3 CO to backup measurements of this PO. What if
a student pass in one CO, but fail in two other COs? We can still allow the
student to pass, based on certain circumstances, to be determined by our
criteria. If the student fail in all COs, it will be bad.
We can safely say that the student had
failed to comply with PO8 based on our passing criteria. This is the
contention. What is the passing mark? In order to increase our standard of
graduates, we should increase it to over 80% but it will mean most students
will fail, and it is also meaningless.
So, the argument that iCGPA is useless in
increasing the standard of our graduates is nonsense. It allows us to measure
the achievement of our graduates more precisely, instead of just relying on
examination results.
Since the quality of graduates is mostly
determined by the standard of testing, just like marking of examination questions,
more time in marking questions and analysing the results will be most useful in
guaranteeing the quality of our graduates.
iCGPA is just a quick way to observe the
quality of our graduates, whether they are balanced or not. It is not that
unbalanced graduates may not be successful. For example, students who have high CGPA in
fundamentals but weak in ethics. The spider diagram shown by iCGPA will not
show a round figure but more oval because some POs have low marks.
iCGPA will just show the diagram. It is up
to the employers to accept the graduate or not. If an employer wants to gamble
with a student who are strong in fundamentals but weak in ethical knowledge, it
is up to them. The employer may be able to provide additional training on
ethics later on.
Again, let me emphasise that the quality of
graduates depends on the quality of testing. Less time spent in teaching is
acceptable. What is the point of teaching, if you do not know your objective?
Blindly and aimlessly teaching without knowing the outcome is very bad.
The argument that with less testing, more
time can be spent on teaching, is not encouraged because it will lead to spoon
feeding. Spoon feeding is so discouraged by the Washington Accord that an
entire PO12 is given towards self-learning. (xii) Life Long Learning -
Recognise the need for, and have the preparation and ability to engage in
independent and life-long learning in the broadest context of technological
change."
The importance given to PO12 is similar to
PO1, "(i) Engineering Knowledge - Apply knowledge of mathematics, natural
science, engineering fundamentals and an engineering specialisation as
specified in WK1 to WK4 respectively to the solution of complex engineering
problems."
Faculty of Engineering, UMS, has developed
an iCGPA online computer program, that uses the BEM PO as the main objective.
This fact is included because there were some comments that OBE is different
from iCGPA, which is entirely false. BEM
PO, as required by Washington Accord is the OBE developed by ABET. iCGPA is
just a renaming of OBE to be applied to MQA standards that is to be applied to
other courses in Malaysian universities.
The argument that iCGPA is not used by
world leading universities is also false because NTU and NUS engineering
courses are required to comply with the Washington Accord. Of course, each
university and country will apply different implementations of the Washington
Accord, but BEM has chosen to apply word for word the entire Graduates Attributes
that are required by the Washington Accord. MQA is different but follow the
same spirit. In fact, MQA requires only
8 PO. https://www.mohe.gov.my/muat-turun/awam/penerbitan/icgpa/124-rubrik-icgpa
page 27.
In the example iCGPA, ethics is closest to
HPP-4.
https://www.mohe.gov.my/en/download/awam/penerbitan/icgpa/126-pamphlet-icgpa-bi/file
page 2, should be 1.
As to iCGPA being not measurable, it is up
to the programme to determine outcomes that are measurable only. If you ask
yourself to measure something that is unmeasurable, such as how ethical a
person is, of course you cannot do it. In fact, impossible. There is nothing
wrong with iCGPA. It is the programme that has failed to apply iCGPA properly.
The Minister of Education has made a
statement that iCGPA implementation is no longer compulsoray. For Engineering
Faculties, implementing the ideas of iCGPA is compulsory because BEM mandated
it. For other faculties, it is recommended that they make the extra effort to
measure the attributes of their graduates more accurately using the iCGPA
guidelines.
Faculties who do not implement iCGPA
guidelines will not be able to take the opportunity to produce balanced
graduates which is required by Malaysia in order to be progressive. If properly
implemented, employers will appreciate it more. Just show the results of the
iCGPA, instead of just CPGA, and let employers decide for themselves.
As to the deteriorating in the standard of
our graduates despite these advanced measurements, we should not blame the
system. It has nothing to do with teaching at all. It is the lowering in the
standard of passing for students.
Lecturers are pressured to pass students.
In the end, unqualified students are still allowed to pass. It is much easier
to pass students than to fail them. If you fail students, you need to justify
why students fail.
In the iCGPA, as in all quality systems,
CQI (continuous quality improvement) is important. When we identify that many
students fail to satisfy our standard, we must find ways to investigate the
reasons for the failure.
The easiest way to solve the problem is to
lower our standard, then all students will pass. You cannot blame the iCGPA
system for this. We must blame our honesty in this regard. The very best system
in the world will fail if we are not honest.
Should we therefore abandon iCGPA because
we cannot be honest? Just go back to the basic evaluation system which is well
established and much better understood. However, if we are not honest, the same
lowering of standard of graduates will occur. Making it worse, you do not even
know in the areas that the graduates are weak in. The extra teaching hour will
never produce better graduates because we allow sub-standard graduates to pass.
Because employers and the public are not
stupid. They know that the standard of passing has dropped so they just ignore
the grades. In fact, in many companies, especially multi-nationals, the minimum
passing mark is CGPA 3.0. If we lower this standard even more, sooner or later,
the minimum standard will be CGPA 3.5 and later on, even CGPA 4.0 will be
useless, as had happened to certain qualifications in Malaysia and even whole
nations.
The solution to this problem of the
lowering of standard is just to reverse the practise. If we are really honest
in getting high quality graduates, we just ignore all failures, but all passes
need to be justified, and even had to go through another independent but
simplified test. Exit tests for graduates is vital towards achieving this
higher standard. If any students who are deemed to pass, and yet fail in their
exit tests, the lecturers had to explain why.
The CQI for iCGPA creates another pressure
to pass students because the criteria of quality here is the passing rate. If
we use the passing of the iCGPA of students as a performance indicator for
lecturers, the best options for the lecturers will be just to pass as many
students as possible, thus lowering the quality of graduates.
For me, I use the results to determine new
methods and duration of teaching that need to be spent on the subject matter.
If the poor results are due to the poor quality of students, this should be
investigated. Lecturers should never be investigated for failing students but
must be investigated why students pass when their fundamentals are weak.
It will look as though, we may encourage
lecturers to point fingers to other lecturers but this is inevitable if we want
high quality graduates. Lecturers who just pass students need to be
investigated, instead of lecturers who fail students.
Lecturers who fail students are the real
heroes of our education system. They have managed to maintain the quality of
our graduates all these while. They are a dying breed, I am afraid. So, I
appeal to everybody, lecturers, students and the parents, to consider carefully
why we must uplift the standard of our graduates.
Why should we care whether the standard of
our graduates is still high? How about those who fail? Shouldn't the cost of
education so high if we keep on failing students, although we allow them to
repeat their subjects?
The answer to the questions above is simply
to question our honesty. If we are honest in increasing the quality of our graduates,
we need to take drastic measures. Costs are secondary. If we can afford it, we
can allow students to repeat. If we cannot, we should just let them fail or
take up other courses that are more suitable for them.
If we are really concerned about costs, we
should allow brilliant student to graduate early. My estimate is that about 10%
of them will be able to graduate a few years early by letting them study by
themselves. In fact, courses should be crammed and limited to as few years as
possible.
Even for Engineering degrees, 3 years
should be the duration of courses. Arguments that it cannot be done for
Malaysia is nonsense. Malaysia had implemented 3-year courses it and many
students graduated on time. In UK, graduates, including myself, routinely
graduate within 3 years. In USA, many students graduate within 2 years,
although the entrance requirement is just SPM. In USA, they allow short term
courses during the vacation period so that some students can graduate within 2
years. Why are we kidding ourselves?
Some students can study by themselves exceptionally well. Even during colonial
days, some students were allowed to upgrade classes in primary schools. Once
independent, we downgrade ourselves by pretending that our citizens are not
able to do it. There was a scheme that allow students to upgrade by class
starting from primary 3, by taking special classes, but it was abandoned.
Students as well as nations, save money by graduating early, and yet, we
discriminate against ourselves, by pretending that students can get better
results by taking more time to graduate. The better examination results by
taking longer to study is meaningless in determining the quality of our
graduates as shown by UK 3-year graduates vs Malaysian's 4-year graduates.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.458.7060&rep=rep1&type=pdf, and others show that the younger the scientist
start working, the more productive they become. Similarly, for inventors,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162513001911#bb0165.
As to the larger number of failures for
3-year courses, but allowing weaker students to repeat, will allow the same
number of graduates within 4 years also. There was no study of Malaysian students
who took the 3-year Engineering degrees in Malaysia and how many of them
managed to graduate within 4 years. I bet, that the number of students who
graduate should be the same as those who took the 4-year courses. It means
that, a significant number of students manage to still graduate within 3 years,
that would otherwise waste time studying slowly with the rest of the weaker
students. The nation saves tremendous amount of money, that Malaysia need to
develop our nation quickly.
The problem is that the Washington Accord
only allow 4-year guided courses. No self-learning allowed. Not even 1 year
spent on Industrial training, which is surprising to me. To skip this
requirement, UK universities still graduate within 3 years but add another year
to get an Master, in order to qualify for Chartered Engineering status.
http://www.eac.org.my/web/document/FAQ.pdf
