OEL Implementation in Sustainable Engineering Education

In developing countries such as Malaysia, science and technology play a vital role in modernization and industrialization. Therefore, there is an immense need of improvement in service management for science and technology education to emphasize various course delivery methods at higher learning institutions rather than merely on conservative measures in order to be able to produce proactive and self-independent students. This study assesses the impacts of Open Ended Laboratory (OEL) to Diploma in Civil Engineering students in general and investigates its effects on students’ performance in a university in Malaysia. Comparison was made on three different branches i.e. Branch 1 (Sarawak), Branch 2 (Penang) and Branch 3 (Pahang). With a view to improve the conventional laboratory, OEL provides a more relevant technique to produce a competent engineer as it critically examines the core element of openness in experimental work. In OEL, students are given responsibilities to explore and design their own experimental work to solve a problem. Five different engineering laboratory courses were analyzed accordingly to its cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. It is found that there are many broad issues that can be brought up particularly when the faculty has just introduced the implementation of OEL in June 2013. Results show that there is a similar trend on the impacts of OEL to all branches which highlights the uniformity between faculties in branches. Closing the Loop (CDL) GPA indicator for five courses has dropped upon the implementation of OEL except for one course in Branch 3. In Branch 1 particularly, 1 of the 5 courses shows a decrease in percentage of getting a grade A but overall, the students show that they are able to adapt with the changes. It is certain that the element in OEL does help them to stimulate their learning environment and able to replace the conventional method, which is no longer adequate to fulfill the requirement in the industry. This also shows how important it is for the faculties and academicians to keep improving their service quality through improvisations to help produce a better quality of graduates as the university main product.