Is the iCGPA really ill-conceived? A rebuttal

With reference to the letter “Revoke the ill-conceived iCGPA” allow us to provide the following answers to the author’s contentions:

Contention: The idea of iCGPA is “ill-conceived”

Answer: Contrary to the author’s claim that iCGPA is “ill-conceived” in his introductory remarks and lacks “rationale,” the iCGPA which was piloted in five public universities in August 2015 serves multiple and varied purposes for various stakeholders.

We suggest that the author spends some time reading page 113 of the iCGPA Rubric: Learning Outcomes Assessment Guide, the authoritative iCGPA guidebook and page 1-12 of the Malaysian Education Blueprint (MEB) 2015-2025, published by the Higher Education Ministry in 2016 and 2015, respectively.

iCGPA was conceived as a result of misconstrued or shallow understanding found in the curriculum design, delivery and assessment of academic programmes even after more than 10 years of outcomes-based education (OBE) implementation, which started in 2008/2009.

Much of the design at both the programme and course levels employ a lip-sync traditional/transitional OBE approach, rather than the desired transformational OBE. Many of the course learning outcomes (CLOs) were written carelessly, lacked clarity of focus, were not aligned to the Malaysian Qualification Framework (MQF) learning outcome domains (LODs) and did not explicitly target the nurturing of attributes development as agreed in the Course-LOD and course-sub-attribute matrices.

In fact, one single CLO for a particular course promised to nurture development of many LODs instead of just one LOD. Furthermore, the action verbs used for many of the CLOs were wrongly chosen for the promised LOD and for the intended complexity level.

Worst still, regardless of which LOD the course would develop, the assessment instruments chosen to collect evidence of CLO attainment were mainly the non-authentic, stereotyped written exams, while the teaching and learning activities were predominantly the traditional lecture-lab-tutorial and minimally capitalised on the use of technology as learning enablers.

In other words, the assessment and the instructional activities were not constructively aligned to the intended CLOs and the teaching activities did not take advantage of contemporary learning enablers towards making learning meaningful and effective.

While redesigning of academic curriculum towards attaining holistic, balanced and entrepreneurial graduates by design is mandatory for all institutes of higher learning, any decision to implement iCGPA reporting is decided upon by the university senate.

Each university has their own way to implement this without sacrificing on the fundamentals of OBE and iCGPA-compliant curriculum design, delivery and assessment.

Contention: iCGPA “contains unmeasureable attributes”

Answer: Assessment tasks can be designed during the learning tasks/activities that will allow nurturing and measuring of the generic attributes and sub-attributes. For example, a classroom collaborative learning activity is a meaningful learning activity that can be used to develop and measure leadership, teamwork and social skills.

A community engagement learning activity for any course, for example, can allow the nurturing and assessment of interpersonal skills, social responsibility, teamwork, effective leadership skills, values and attitudes, professionalism, effective verbal communication and many more.

An aligned assessment tool to use in measuring these generic attributes is the direct observation made by course instructors and complemented by peer and self-assessment. Scoring the attainment level of these skills by instructors and fellow students can easily be done by using a scoring rubrics (see for example scoring rubric from the MOHE (iCGPA Rubric: Learning Outcomes Assessment Guide) without having to resort to any psychometric instruments.

Contention: iCGPA “Ambiguously defined attributes and forced assessments”

Answer: The six student outcomes outlined in the Malaysian Education Blueprint and the consequent attributes displayed on the iCGPA spider web are reflected in the attributes of the MQF published by Malaysia Qualification Agency in 2007 and in line with the National Education Philosophy.

These attributes that stem from attributes recommended by other national qualification framework around the world as a result of the Bologna Process, are the core transferable attributes/skills that compliment cognitive and technical skills of the discipline. Hence, nurturing these attributes and assessing students’ performance in the context of the field of study becomes a necessity.

In designing and redesigning the programme curriculum, the attributes are to be nurtured throughout the courses offered by the programme, gradually and systematically and taking into consideration the practicality and limitations of the course.

Decisions on which courses are to nurture which attributes and sub-attributes during the learning journey should be made through a collective agreement between all lecturers within a programme, between programmes and between faculties.

This collective agreement is tabulated in the course-LODs matrix and the course-sub-attributes matrix. Consequently, when crafting CLO statements, deciding on the aligned assessment instruments and determining the constructively aligned teaching and learning activities, course designers will have to refer to both of the matrices.

Hence, if the programme design follows the design fundamentals, the value represented on each of the spider radar reflects a student’s integrated performance for that particular learning outcome domain.

Nurturing of the generic attributes (higher education values-driven attributes) is necessary and it should be done by design. A change in the teaching and learning activity from providing instruction to producing learning and incorporating 21st-century learning skills and learning enablers is all that is necessary to shift our existing practices in supporting the development of holistic, balanced and entrepreneurial graduates.

As an example of assessing values-driven outcomes attainment, including items in exam question is definitely not an aligned assessment method for students to demonstrate how well they respect others or how well they accept other’s opinions.

Contention: “Ridiculous documentation”

Answer: Without ascertaining the validity of the author’s claim, we are at a loss why the author’s university requires a course resource person to include items to assess those values-driven attributes as part of a written exam.

We are also puzzled on the need to record assessment data on large spreadsheet datasheets. The author is right in arguing that it just does not make any sense. As part of good practices, a sit-down, time-bound, written examination is an aligned and appropriate instrument for students to demonstrate how well they can regurgitate, have understood (cognition: declare what and how much knowledge they can remember at the time of exam period), can apply procedural knowledge and perform analysis on familiar and well-defined problems, read effectively and perhaps also write effectively.

On the contrary, written exams are not aligned and not suitable for assessing quality (high order thinking skills) and values-driven learning in authentic settings.

The quality learning here refers to responsibly and ethically analysing and evaluating issues, opinions and solutions and creating new ideas, procedures and designs in solving complex and often vaguely or ill-defined problems both in the field of study and in the context of society.

In addition, it also refers to learning to be independent learners, efficient information managers, competent ICT tools users and respectful, responsible, professional and entrepreneurial individuals while engaging with diverse groups involved in any engagement.

Contention: “Much work but little to show”, “unnecessary spider chart” and “the rest of the world is not doing it.”

Answer: Generating the spider web is an added value. In brief, the spider web informs the: (a) Students on their learning gaps and room for improvement during their learning journey; (b) Lecturer and curriculum designer on what improvement and learning interventions are required by the cohort and individual students; (c) Parents and scholarship providers with regard to the learners holistic, balanced and entrepreneurial development; and (d) Potential employers in deciding how to use the data towards making employment suitability judgment.

Claiming that “The quality of a student is easily reflected in the conventional CGPA” is indeed acceptable only if we are trying to find evidence of declarative knowledge which means ability to construct a model of phenomena and ability to execute procedural knowledge for familiar and routine tasks, but we will not have any performance evidence about the student’s competency other than his cognition.

A very prominent educator and a public university board of directors past chair once used the phrase “A four flat student who falls flat.” He was referring to a group of high academic achievers who, when confronted with issues requiring collaborative engagement, failed to collaboratively engage due to lack of interpersonal skills, effective communication, cognitive skills, teamwork and leadership skills despite having a CGPA of four flat.

The iCGPA-transcript maintains traditional reporting of academic attainment, i.e., the grade, GPA and CGPA for cognition. Additionally, attainments of other relevant/significant attributes are also displayed. This is the added-value that can be utilised by stakeholders in making relevant and appropriates decisions during the learning journey or upon graduation.

On “the rest of the world is not doing it,” we can only answer on behalf of our country. In Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and Australasia, the development of transferable and generic skills is made mandatory as specified in the outcome domains of the respective national qualification framework.

Malaysia is also at par with them since our institutes of higher learning conform to the MQF and MQA requirements in accrediting academic programmes. What separates us from the rest of the world is that we are bold enough to pioneer the assessment and reporting of both the technical and generic/transferable skills development.

We end this letter by quoting a Malay proverb, “Betulkan yang biasa dan biasakan yang betul” which is highly relevant towards the redesigning of a 21st-century, iCGPA-compliant curriculum, delivery and assessment. -Mkini