Identifying Student-Focused Intervention Programmes through Discrimination Index

Discrimination index is one of the quantitative methods that seek to differentiate between students of high and low achievement by analysing their answers to examination questions at the end of their learning process. This assessment is done based on specific objectives such as identifying the level of students understanding on what they had learnt. Through discrimination index, various intervention programmes that students focused on can be proposed. Intervention programme must be designed according to the level of achievement of the students in the different groups and not based on the overall students’ achievements of the particular cohort. This paper reports a study on discrimination index using index ratings on a final year design-based course at the Department of Mechanical and Material Engineering of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The calculated indices have been successful in identifying appropriate intervention programmes to suit students of low achievers in the course.