Maintaining the quality of the Master’s degree programme in physics education at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

Abstract

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia is a Research University that offers a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate study programmes especially at the postgraduate level. The School of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities offers Master’s degrees in various modes which are taught course, research and a mixed of taught course and research. For the Master in Education taught course mode, there are 12 different programmes. Physics Education is one of the programmes offered in this postgraduate degree since 2014 and has undergone a series of improvements based on the data collected over the years on the performance of the programme. This paper shares the practices on quality assurance of this programme based on Outcome Based Education. Some of the data collected are student achievement, external examiner reports, alumni feedback, and annual reviews of the programme. From the data, it is found that this programme produces more effective Physics educators due to its curriculum structure that focuses on providing more in-depth and advanced knowledge and practices in Physics education. Generally, the external stakeholders are satisfied with the quality of the programme though some areas of improvement were pointed out. To expand this quality programme to more people, the programme will be offered as one of the Open and Distance Learning programmes for students around the world.