The constant emphasis on maintaining a
high level of quality in the self directed Open Distance Learning (ODL) experience
at Wawasan Open University (WOU) demands the accurate assessment of learner
centric Outcome Based Education (OBE). The summative and formative assessment
components of each course module are, in theory, designed to effectively
measure the mastery of a set of course learning outcomes (CLOs) by an adult
learner in the ODL environment. However, in reality, there is no real scrutiny
of the assessments to ascertain whether a learner has achieved the expected
mastery of a CLO other than the assumption that assessment marks are an
indication of the mastery of a particular set of CLOs measured in a specific
assessment component.
With the aim of identifying whether assessment marks
are indeed reflective of the mastery of a set of CLOs, a project was initiated
at WOU in collaboration with Pearson eCollege to implement the eCollege
Learning Outcome Manager (LOM), a web based platform, which facilitates the
effective measurement of mastery of CLOs in a course module. TCC123/05 Visual
Programming, a lower level technical course module equivalent to a first year
course module in a conventional university, was identified as a suitable test
case with an enrolment of seventy one learners distributed in four geographic
locations across Malaysia. The evaluation of the mastery of CLOs by learners
was conducted for this course on the LOM as a postmortem exercise which
superimposed the mastery of CLOs on the assessment marks.
Abeywardena, I.S. (2011). Effectively Assessing the
Mastery of Learning Outcomes in ODL Courses.
Proceedings of the 25th Asian Association of Open Universities Annual
Conference, Malaysia (http://library.wou.edu.my/vertical/vf2011-16.pdf)
