Enhancing students akhlaq behaviour through holistic assessment

Abstract

In Malaysia, public examination is the only mode of measuring students’ achievement to date. But in line with the on-going national educational system transformation, a new assessment method will be introduced to gauge the competence of students by taking into account all domains: cognitive; psychomotor; and, affective. This study was carried out to investigate student akhlaq learning in higher education through holistic assessment. The instrument was developed using the Rasch model measurement to analyze the construct validity, reliability, rating scale and dimensionality. Thirty students participated as samples and each of them was assessed by two of their peers using the instrument developed by the researcher. Two tests were administered, before and after the akhlaq learning assessment. Results showed that all item scores of the second test have had better logit, indicating that the students’ akhlaq behaviour has improved considerably. The results of the second test was found to be significantly better than the first test results further demonstrating significant improvement on students’ akhlaq behaviour. Several implications on the akhlaq assessment were drawn from the study that could be used to improve future assessment processes. Similar research should be done on educational assessment of other domains.