Sustainable assessment: The inevitable future of engineering curriculum

Abstract

The programme outcomes, also known as graduate attributes in the International Engineering Alliance, serve as a benchmark of standards for engineering education to higher learning institutions in Malaysia and other signatory countries under the educational accords. Various studies conducted around the world have revealed that evaluating programme outcomes is perhaps the most important criterion for Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) which focuses on improving graduates' intellectual skills and capabilities. Several Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs) in Malaysia have struggled with assessing programme outcomes since the Engineering Accreditation Council Malaysia (EAC) introduced OBE in 2005. Despite the fact that the programme has been in place for over a decade, issues with assessing programme outcomes persist. Unsustainable effort and meaningless outcome assessment among academic staff are exacerbated by a lack of a specific programme outcome model, improper use of assessment tools, and the collection of massive amounts of unnecessary data. The challenges of assessing programme outcomes experienced by HLIs and academic staff are elaborated on in this article. The concept of sustainable development is introduced, which is believed to be capable of alleviating the problems associated with programme outcome assessment. The background of the adoption of OBE in Malaysia, as well as the assessment requirements of the Washington Accord, are presented in order to emphasise sustainable assessment as the inevitable future of engineering curriculum. The sustainable assessment in engineering curriculum advocated in this article aims to produce sustainable engineering graduates while also reducing the burden of programme outcomes assessment on academic staff.