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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 62 (2012) 87 – 92

WC-BEM 2012

Teaching and learning enhancement through outcome-based

education structure and technology e-learning support
Oriah Akir a *, Tang Howe Eng b, Senian Malie c
a
University Technology MARA Sarawak, Mukah Campus, Mukah, 96400, Sarawak, Malaysia
b
University Technology MARA Sarawak, Mukah Campus, Mukah, 96400, Sarawak, Malaysia
c
University Technology MARA Sarawak, Mukah Campus, Mukah, 96400, Sarawak, Malaysia

Abstract

This paper compares the impact of outcome-based education (OBE) structure and aided technology based education with respect
t in terms of grade point average in comparison to conventional teaching-learning approach.
The students examination results of Mei 2010, October 2010, April 2011 and September 2011 are used to compare the s
academic performance respectively. The findings indicated that there is significant difference in the mean grade point average
between OBE students with aided technology learning in comparison to non-OBE students. Mean grade point average for OBE
cohorts is significantly higher than mean grade point average for non-OBE cohorts.
© 2012
© 2012Published
Publishedbyby Elsevier
Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. Selection
Selection and/orand/or peer review
peer review under responsibility
under responsibility of Prof. Dr.ofHuseyin
Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Arasli
Arasli
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Keywords: Outcome-based education, e-learning and technology, conventional teaching-learning approach;

1. Introduction

Education in institutions of higher learning today goes beyond the traditional norms in which lectures, tests and

learning and training. Therefore teaching, learning and training of students on the subject contents need not only be
class-based but also can be carried out online, commonly known as e-learning. This is done due to the growing need
to evaluate the teaching quality at institutions of higher learning in order to be at par with the global teaching-
learning approaches, technology platforms and competitiveness.
Hence, a new learning culture emerges and a new learning model such as an outcome-based education (OBE)
learning approach is favoured and adopted to reform and renew education policy worldwide. This new learning
approach makes teaching and learning more challenging for the academician to administer.
Outcome-based education has gained prominence recognition internationally to promote education reform and
policy. Hence, OBE has been implemented in many countries such as USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South
Africa, Hong Kong and Malaysia alike. Nonetheless, reactions towards OBE vary between commendation by
proponents and condemnation by opponents. However, the implementation of OBE in the Malaysian education
system is still at an infant stage and its impact is not well established. The

* Oriah Akir. Tel: +6084-874103, +6016-8921214

oriah@sarawak.uitm.edu.my

1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Arasli
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.015
88 Oriah Akir et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 62 (2012) 87 – 92

following sections explain the concepts of OBE, discusses on OBE implementation worldwide, OBE in Malaysia
and its impact o in one public university in East Malaysia as a case study.

2. Literature review

2.1. What is OBE?

The main basis of OBE is producing outputs rather than inputs. The learning process is student-centered rather
than lecture-based as in the conventional approach. As defined in Spady (1994: 1) : -based education
means clearly focusing and organising everything in an educational system around what is essential for all students
to be able to do successfully at the end of their learning experiences. This means starting with a clear picture of what
is important for students to be able to do, then organising the curriculum, instruction and assessment to make sure
this learning ultimately happens The premise of OBE is what the students learn, whether students learn
successfully is more important than when and how students learn (Spady, 1994: 8).
In other words, in the process of designing programme curriculum, the outcomes of the learning is emphasised
and pre-determined, that is, what is expected from the learning after the students have graduated in order to equip
them with the necessary skills and capabilities before they enter the work place, then going backward with
curriculum design, programme outcomes and course outcomes, the development of instructions, delivery modes and
appropriate assessments methodologies. One of the ways of complementing content delivery under OBE is through
blended learning which can be carried out through technology support or via online. This is done to encourage
active learning and discover new knowledge in the process of enhancing the understanding of the subject contents.

2.2 OBE around the world

The demand for quality and capable graduates to fulfill industry needs, leads many countries to reform their
education system and structure. The other reasons for reform are due to political pressures and lobby groups that are
in favour of OBE (Malan, 2000; Alderson and Martin, 2007). As such, OBE is the best option to be implemented
albeit with much criticism from opponents who are skeptical about it. These countries include USA (Harden, Crosby
and Davis, 1999), New Zealand (Sundar, 1999), United Kingdom (Ross and Davies, 1999), South Africa (Botha,
2002), Western Australia (Alderson and Martin, 2007) and Hong Kong (Ewell, 2006).
However, due to pressures from the people affected by the system, for example, PLATO (People lobbying
against the outcomes), OBE failed in Western Australia and South Africa and was abandoned in 2007 and 2010
respectively (Lui and Shun, n.d; Berlach and McNaught, 2007). Nevertheless, the OBE system has been successfully
implemented for undergraduate engineering programmes in the member states of the Washington Accord 1989 such
as Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States, with
Germany, Singapore and Malaysia admitted as provisional members (Basri, et al., 2004). OBE has also been
reported successful in one university in the United Arab Emirates (UEA) and it uses learning outcomes as a basis to
design its Information Technology Curriculum (Bouslama, et al., 2003).

2.3 OBE in Malaysia

In Malaysia, OBE is being pioneered by engineering faculties in many universities. These universities include
University Kebangsaan, University Malaysia Pahang, University Putra, Sunway University, University Technology
MARA and University Malaya, to mention a few. Continuous quality improvement requires engineering
programmes of the participating universities need to be recognised by an international accreditation body. The
Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC), formed by the Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM), is the government
agency which has a legal responsibility for registration and regulating the engineering profession in the country
(Basri, et al., 2004).
 Oriah Akir et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 62 (2012) 87 – 92 89

Through EAC, Malaysia was admitted as a provisional member of the Washington Accord. The provision of the
Washington Accord requires the signatory countries to ensure that graduates of the accredited programmes to be
mutually recognised as having met the academic requirements for entry to the practice of engineering in any
member state; and graduates of programmes accredited by the accreditation organisation of each member nation are
prepared to practice engineering at an entry level (Basri, et al., 2004).
As a result, universities offering engineering programmes are required to revise and reform their curriculum
contents, instructions, delivery modes and desired outcomes to meet the Washington Accord provision based on
OBE system. Therefore, universities in Malaysia have to comply in order to be on par with the member countries of
the Washington Accord and meet the requirement of the EAC. In Malaysia, an OBE reform model in many
universities offering engineering programmes was implemented in 2005 (Noor, et al., 2009; Lee, et al., 2009;
Takriff, et al., 2011).
As such, most of the past and recent studies on OBE in Malaysia are at an early stage of curriculum development
for engineering programmes, as is the OBE learning model in engineering programmes. Within the OBE learning
model, the mastery le is incorporated as a frame of reference. On the other hand,
studies on the impact of OBE and its success in terms of students academic performance has not clearly materialised
yet.
Nevertheless, in 2010, in accordance with the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) reform policy and
Malaysian Quality Assurance (MQA) of higher education, OBE was also introduced and piloted in disciplines of
sciences and technology, social sciences and humanities in many universities in Malaysia.
For example, at the beginning of the July 2010 academic session, University Technology MARA, besides
engineering, adopted OBE across other disciplines of business management, sciences and technology, social
sciences and humanities. The students involved in OBE system are now in their fourth semester.
In this pursuit, it is the attempts of this paper to compare the impact of OBE learning model between students
under OBE and students who are not in the OBE system, following the old conventional teaching-learning approach.
The OBE learning approach is also supported by e-learning technology via blended learning which is conducted
online, the platform for active learning among students on subject contents. Under this online learning, the students
learning processes are facilitated by lecturers. Learning materials and assessments were posted online to be accessed
by students.
Hence, the main premise of this paper is to determine the mean difference of grade point average in terms of
academic performance among these two cohorts of students, that is, OBE cohorts and non-OBE cohorts.

3. Methodology

In order to achieve the objectives of this study, the two semesters final examination results of Mei 2010 and
Oktober 2010 for non-OBE cohorts students and April 2011 and September 2011 for OBE cohorts students were
used for data analysis. Descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test were performed to establish the group
statistic and significant difference in the mean grade point average between OBE cohorts and non-OBE cohorts
students and also the mean grade point average by streams.
Correlation analysis was also conducted to determine correlation between students class size and grade point of
course code; and the correlation between the semester (part) the students in and grade point of course code.
In addition, the students entrance-exit survey and self-assessment level score was also calculated to examine the
alignment level score among students of OBE cohorts as well as to identify whether there is difference between
students from science streams and social sciences streams in term of grade point average and overall scores at
programme level and course level.
All students (244) of the respective semester from one public university in East Malaysia was involved in this
study and 89 course codes were included in the analysis. Out of these, 45 course codes are from OBE cohorts and
44 are from non-OBE cohorts.
90 Oriah Akir et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 62 (2012) 87 – 92

4. Findings and summary discussions

4.1 Comparison of student s academic performance

As shown in Table 1.1, students academic performance in terms of grade point average, the findings revealed that
OBE students score higher than non-OBE students. There is a significant difference in the mean grade point average
between OBE and non-OBE students with p-value of 0.001 and mean grade point of 2.7471 and 2.3998 respectively.
In terms of streams, as depicted in Table 1.2 and Table 1.3, there is significant difference in mean grade point
average among OBE students from sciences stream in terms of academic performance than students from social
sciences with mean grade point average 3.0386 and 2.4683 respectively, p-value of 0.000. However, there is no
significant difference between mean grade point average among non-OBE students regardless of streams (mean-
2.4359-sciences; mean-2.3636-social sciences, p-value-0.592).

Table 1.1: Comparison of mean great point average between OBE and non-OBE students

OBE and Non-OBE N Mean Standard Sig. p-value

Deviation
OBE cohorts 45 2.7471 0.53935 0.001
Non-OBE cohorts 44 2.3998 0.44009 0.001

Table 1.2: Mean grade point average for OBE students by streams

Programme Code N Mean Standard Sig. p-value

Deviation
DBS (social sciences) 23 2.4683 0.11031 0.000
DPIM (sciences) 22 3.0386 0.08037 0.000

Table 1.3: Mean grade point average for non-OBE students by streams

Programme Code N Mean Standard Sig. p-value

Deviation
DBS (social sciences) 22 2.3636 0.11095 0.592
DPIM (sciences) 22 2.4359 0.07479 0.592

4.2 Correlation of grade point score of course code by students class size and semester

As revealed in Table 1.4, class size and semester significantly correlated to great point of course code score
regardless whether the students were from OBE or non OBE system. This finding suggests that in terms of class
size, the negative correlation indicates that larger class size affects students grade point of course codes taken (p-
value <0.05, r=-0.376). In other words, in general, it is assumed that small class size contributes to better score in
grade point of course codes.
On the other hand, the positive correlation of semester to grade point of course codes taken (p-value <0.05,
r=0.247) suggests that the higher the semester they are in the more likely that the students will strive to improve
their grade point score which in turn leads to higher academic performance.
 Oriah Akir et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 62 (2012) 87 – 92 91

Table 1.4: Correlation of grade point of course code by class size and semester

Grade Class Size Semester

Grade 1
Class Size -0.376**
Semester 1 0.247*
N 89 89 89
*Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (1-tailled)
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

4.3. Conclusions, limitations and direction for future research

The findings suggest that the students following the OBE structure and technology e-learning support are more

learning assessments results on their learning experiences using entrance-exit survey form which showed the
average alignment level score of course outcomes, programme outcomes, learning outcomes and soft skills stands
between 4.00 to 5.00 and the attainment of the programme outcome stands at 3.00 and 4.00 for the social streams
students and sciences streams students respectively out of 5.00 for all course codes taken (45 course codes).
As a conclusion, the implementation and application of OBE learning approach supporting by technology e-
learning indicates better grade point average achievement in term of academic performance in comparison to the
conventional teaching-learning approach. However, when tested individually by programmes and streams, its impact
is significantly higher for sciences students than social sciences students.
Nevertheless, it could not be generalised conclusively that the OBE learning approach is best suited students in
the sciences streams in comparison to social sciences students, since this study only focuses on small samples
respondents in one small branch of one of the biggest university in Malaysia. Furthermore, suffice to say that, the
assessment methods, the mode of delivery, and teaching-learning process are different for these two streams of
students. The level of difficulty of questions during assessments and examinations also varies between different
courses depending on the lecturers and the requirements of each programme/faculty, even though the general rule to
be adhered by lecturers at all programme/faculty levels is to strictly follow the Bloom Taxonomy learning model as
a frame of reference.
Therefore, direction for future research is recommended to include a broader perspective in terms of other
possibilities to include the academi
interesting to note the perceptions of the end-users of the system against and direction
of the regulators reform and policy as had been experienced in other parts of the world (for example, in Western
Australia and South Africa) that opposed the idea of OBE.
Nevertheless, in this case, OBE and technology e-learning support
academic performance in terms of overall grade point average achieved by students regardless of programmes and
streams.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge University Technology MARA Sarawak for allowing us access to the
data for use in the analysis and sincerely expressed our appreciation.
92 Oriah Akir et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 62 (2012) 87 – 92

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