OBE in Teaching and Learning: Implementation Level Study at Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Polytechnic

Abstract

Polytechnic Malaysia was first introduced to Outcome-Based Education (OBE) since 2010 to meet the requirements of the Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF). The concept of OBE was introduced to replace traditional education. One of the principles of OBE is "curriculum design down" which requires alignment between each level of implementation. Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Polytechnic (PSMZA) is one of the polytechnics that strives to cultivate the OBE ecosystem among staff and students. However, PSMZA faces several problems in implementing OBE, such as the lack of clarity regarding the level of the OBE ecosystem that has been implemented in PSMZA, difficulties in identifying lecturers according to departments who need OBE-related workshop courses, and difficulties in setting the focus of the OBE course content for the short term. The purpose of this study was to examine the implementation level of the OBE ecosystem such as planning, delivery and assessment in teaching and learning at PSMZA. This study was conducted as a survey and the research data was analyzed using the statistical software package The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 18.0. to obtain the mean and standard deviation as well as significant relationships and differences. The results of the analysis show a high level between the practice of planning, implementation, and assessment of learning at PSMZA, while the correlation analysis shows that there is a significant relationship between the three and there is no difference in the level of implementation of OBE among departments except JTMK in terms of evaluation. In conclusion, the OBE ecosystem has become a culture at PSMZA, but efforts are still needed to overcome some of the problems encountered in its implementation.