My Critical Reflection on the Issues

Tracking back to the initiative made by Ministry of Higher Education on the plan to introduce the ‘soft skills’ modules for all undergraduates of Malaysian public universities on June 2006; and up-to-date, university’s key-persons obviously aware of the latest higher education policy; and every members/profilers in the education field should be aware and ready for this implementation. The issue of ‘not aware’ of this exercise should not rise in mass audience.

Hopefully, to this date, lecturers (would be assessor) should be aware that they hold the padlock to the students future potential for employment. The 8th week for assessing period is just around the corner.

Are the lecturers (would be assessor) ready?
Given the short notice to UMLIC to train UM lecturers to teach and assess final year undergraduate students for soft skills competency is not an easy job. It requires careful plan and cooperation from all parties involved. Given a short time for awareness and training, what the committee able to do is organize a one-day workshop which is compulsory for all lecturers to attend. Like Dr. Raja Maznah said, it’s a band-aid situation. Try to cover as much as they can in order to achieve the target by the 12th week of Semester 2 session. Hopefully through the workshops, lecturers gain as much as information and able to assess their students justifiably (the future of UM products is at stake). The workshops and break-down facilitating is a good approach for a short term plan; such as the case above.

How about the long run?
Big issue: implementing the exercise in UM environment and the continuation of this exercise for a longer term.
To ensure the successful of this exercise, awareness and understanding from involved parties such as lecturers and students are essential. Here are few suggestions on methods and tools to implement the exercise:

Conduct training / workshops for lecturers (would be assessor) – make it compulsory for all lecturers (as part of staff development program)
- Implementing classroom based / non-classroom based project in the teaching
- customize curriculum / syllabus (stand-alone, embedded or integrated soft skills content in syllabus)
- establish understanding of lecturers on this exercise

Educate the students on developing soft skills on oneself à through classroom, projects and community involvement.

Awareness program to the undergrads from the first year (nurturing from the start) à not only because of being evaluate through out the studies, but equip one-self with the necessary soft skills (in order to excel, for self achievement and complement industry demand)

Soft Skills Development Community – forming collaboration between experts, partners’ universities, public and private institutions and corporate sector. Collaboration from different parties may expand views and approaches on helping to develop soft skills competency of UM students.

Soft Skills Online portal which can be access by lecturers (staffs) and students
- Related articles on soft skills
- Training modules
- Pre-test and soft skills competency assessment – online evaluation
- Forums
- Discussions
- Continuous monitoring and supervising by steering community
- Collaboration with other institutions (universities or evaluation bodies)
- Further enhancement involving industry and corporate sector

Implementation of soft skills development in university requires proper planning, design, development and continuous evaluation to make it better. Due to that, as part of UM community, myself and team members are currently designing approach to enable all parties involved can get information from online source, means to be able to download materials, modules, articles, sharing information and for online assessment. We are also hoping that the suggested online portal will serve as a common ground for everyone to communicate and exchange ideas on soft skills development.


*** Welcome any feedback on my perceptions and reflections. ;-)

Issue #4 UMLIC roles

UMLIC roles and strategies in promoting this routine

• To provide training on teaching and assessing soft skills to the lecturers in the form of workshops, seminars or other applicable medium of delivery
• Managing Project; looking into project constraint and strategies such as time, budget and resources
• Provide supports for current/future development program
• Guide the steering committee to ensure the exercise is up-to-date

Issue #3 Implementation

Examining the problems, questions and issues, here is the suggested implementation strategies:

• Training on teaching and assessing 7 soft skills to the lecturers in the form of workshops, seminars --> through collaborative learning; peer-to-peer
• Training and modules on designing syllabus (learning outcomes); to embed or integrate soft skills content
• Creating customize assessment tools and methods specifically for UM environment, for example; guidelines for assessment, standard assessment forms, assessment parameter
• Creating online network; through Soft Skills portal which is accessible for lecturers and students à to get articles, modules, pre-test and assessment form
• Forming Soft Skills Development Community – in the long run we are looking at collaboration with partners’ universities, institutes and colleges and also from corporate sectors.

How to make the implementation successful?
- Cooperation from all parties involved
- Supports from the steering committee

Issue #2 Creating Understanding

Defining soft skills and competency assessment to all stakeholders.

‘Soft skills competency assessment is an initiative by Ministry of Higher Education to ensure the products of Malaysian universities meet the job requirements and industry demands. Soft skills are implemented in the universities to develop sustainable practices among the graduate and prepare themselves for their profession in future.’

Explaining and making all involved parties understand about the exercise is important to ensure every party can carry their task effectively.

Lecturer may know or not know to assess the students’ competency. Lecturer may recognize the students’ character and capability individually --> especially for achievers and popular; but how about under-achievers and non-popular? Does lecturer notice them?
It goes back to the fair judgment of a lecturer. Some lecturer may give yes, may give no and some may just let it go. It will greatly affect the students’ potential for employment when their certificate shows doubting result.

But how can the lecturer assess the students in their subject (classroom)? Does their syllabus (learning outcomes) indicate certain soft skills being observed or practiced?
Maybe for some subjects such as Business Studies, Communications, Linguistics, Computers and etc., we can see that some skills are taught and acquired directly, but does it enough to cover all the demands by the industry? How about too theoretical subject? How about the demand of incorporating all 7 soft skills in one subject and the observe period is limited?
This goes back to the training for lecturers on designing course syllabus (learning outcomes) to embed or integrate soft skills content in the syllabus. Or, university experts itself design a stand-alone module only for soft skills.

How to make the involved parties understand the importance of this exercise?
Suggested solution and methods: Faculty meeting, seminar, workshop, forums and discussions via UM email/e-learning portals.

Issue #1 Creating Awareness

Create awareness to the lecturers (as assessor) and final year undergraduate students (being assessed) on soft skills competency assessment.

Target audience:
- lecturers (would be assessor) – main
- final year undergraduate students

How to make the involved parties aware of this exercise?
Suggested solution and methods: Faculty meeting, monthly assembly, survey form, questionnaires, seminar, workshop, forums and discussions via UM email/e-learning portals

Contents of delivery:
- MOHE initiative to ensure that UM products meet the job requirements and industry demands.
- Gauge lecturers and students understanding on soft skills competency.
- Suggest ways on effective assessment method that caters to the constraints on-hand à such as time, budget and resources

Identifying Problems

Given the task of identifying problems on topic given, we have to project the first impression of the problem. Understanding the overview of the problem and instruction is essential before exploring the problems critically.

My First perceptions of the problem
Understand that a task was given to UMLIC (University of Malaya Learning Improvement Center), on 5 January 2006 by the university management to enable UM to meet the Ministry of Higher Education mandate. Which is the order is … that by the 12th week of Semester 2, 2006/2007, all final year undergraduate students must be certified “soft skills” competent by the university, as their graduation requirement. Lecturers are expected to start assessing the students from the 8th week of the semester.

Given a problem surely raise questionable statements such as what, why, when, how and do. What’s the issue here?

Questions

• Do the lecturers know that they have to assess final year undergraduate students’ competency in 7 soft skills? -> Creating awareness --> Go to Issue #1
• Do the final year undergraduate students know that they are being assessed? Do the students are given enough time to prepare and equipped themselves with any competency in soft skills? --> Go to Issue #1
• Back to the basic: What are the soft skills? How do we (or lecturers or students) know that we are equipped with competency in any soft skills? -> Defining and implementing soft skills in oneself --> Go to Issue #2
• Do the lecturers know how to assess the final year undergraduate students’ competency in 7 soft skills? Do the lecturers will give fair judgments when assessing their students? -> understanding soft skills --> Go to Issue #2
• In what way (methods or parameter) to assess? -> Guideline books are circulating around universities involved (sample from UPM) --> Go to Issue #3
• How a lecturer can identifies students’ individual skills if the lecturer has to look after more than 50 students in a lecture hall? Do the lecturers know well enough each of their students? --> Go to Issue #3
• How can the lecturers assess the final year undergraduate students in a short time? -> time constraint --> Go to Issue #4
• Who will be the champion / key person / steering committee to ensure the exercise are running? --> Go to Issue #4

Big Q!
How to implement this exercise in UM environment and the continuation of this exercise for a longer term? -->
Go to Issue #3 and #4

PXGT 6103 Assignment #1

Problem Based Learning: Design Training for UM Lecturers on Teaching and Assessing Final Year Students’ Competency in 7 Soft-Skills

The primary purpose of UMLIC (University of Malaya Learning Improvement Center) is to design, develop and produce materials and activities intended to address learning or performance requirements of a given audience. As an instructional systems design and development centre UMLIC will contribute to the development of the University of Malaya through the design and development of learning innovation and improvement at the local, regional and international levels (UMLIC’s concept paper, 1995).

A task was given to UMLIC, on 5 January 2006 by the university management to enable UM to meet the Ministry of Higher Education mandate.

That by the 12th week of Semester 2, 2006/2007, all final year undergraduate students must be certified “soft skills” competent by the university, as their graduation requirement. Lecturers are expected to start assessing the students from the 8th week of the semester.

UM has requested that the problems be solved by training of lecturers to teach and assess student competency in the following soft skills:
1. Communication
2. Critical thinking and problem solving
3. Team work
4. Leadership
5. Life-long learning
6. Professional ethics and moral
7. Entrepreneurship

PXGT6103 2007 Instructional Design and Development

This subject is all about ID.