A Consistent Numerical Procedure for Integrated Assessment

Abstract

Due to the outcome-based educational approach, engineering programs must rigorously assess their performance by measuring students’ competencies, or outcomes. Two main assessment strategies exist: a holistic assessment based on specific entries and an integrated assessment based on student performance in all courses of a program. For the latter, challenges remain for programs to gather assessment data at the course level and transform them into compact information to measure performance from different perspectives. Current approaches for integrated assessment as practiced by many engineering programs in Malaysia lack standardization and quantitative rigor to provide reliable and meaningful outputs. This work proposes a new assessment model that addresses such issues. It uses matrix mapping and formalizes a consistent mathematical procedure to aggregate data across various levels. Its development, simulation, benefits, and issues are discussed. One advantage of the model is that it allows for a more automated assessment system to be developed.