The Measurement of Program Outcomes through Research Project in the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, UKM

A research project has been established as a project conducted by the final year students individually. It is divided into two parts, Research Project I and Research Project II. The course is carried out for two semesters, at Semester VII and VIII of the study programme. To conduct this research project, every student is supervised by at least a lecturer. Research Project I covers the literature review for the selected title which is related with chemical and process engineering, the initial preparation and study of the project and report writing for the project task. At the end of the semester, students are asked to present a project proposal/project progress orally and in the form of a written report. This research project will then proceed to the Research Project II, which is performed in the following semester. This second project involves practical work, results and data analysis, discussion of the results, final report writing and oral presentation in a viva session. At the end of the semester, students are required to complete a dissertation/thesis and present the research outcomes orally in front of supervisors and the appointed examiner. To achieve the program outcomes for the program, an effort has been exerted to measure the Program Outcome (PO) based on the evaluation scheme of the Research Project II. Based on the PO mapping towards the Course Learning Outcome (CO), the PO assessed for this course covers almost all POs, which are 8 POs out of a total of 9 POs for both programmes. The mapping enables the PO assessment, based on the marks given for the POs. The data analysis obtained shows that students from both programmes have achieved around the scale of 3.7 up to 4 for all PO assessed, based on the Likert scale. This study illustrates the fact that PO can be indirectly deduced through the CO assessment. The obtained results also suggest that the PO achievement for the student has been regarded as encouraging and satisfactory.