Achievement of Course Outcomes in Basic Thermodynamics Course based on Students' Perception

摘要

In an outcome based education (OBE) system, a lecturer teaching any course should outline course outcomes in the course syllabus. Course outcomes are attributes or skills to be achieved by students when the course is completely delivered at the end of a semester. At the beginning of a semester, it is recommended for lecturers to list and inform their students on the course outcomes so that the students will have some ideas what to achieve from the course. The Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) has adopted the OBR approach since Session 2005/2006. Since then, the entire course syllabus should contain the course outcomes. In the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, basic concepts of thermodynamics has been taught in a course, known as KKKR1 134 Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics I, in Semester I for first year students. In order to improve the teaching and learning of this course, a questionnaire was distributed to the first year students to obtain their feedbacks on the achievement of the course outcomes at the beginning and the end of the semester. The results show that the students grab the understandings and skills of the course outcomes towards the end of the semester. The findings from the survey can be the guidelines for the lecture who teaches the course to further improve the delivery so that all students can have a much better understandings on the thermodynamic concepts and achieve the course attributes confidently at the end of the semester.