Open Ended Laboratory (OEL) Assignment as Tool Imparting Generic Skills for Engineering Students


  •  Noorhisham Tan Kofli    
  •  Syarifah Najiha Badar    
  •  Norliza Abd Rahman    
  •  Mohd Shahbudin Mastar    
  •  Siti Rozaimah Sheikh Abdullah    

Abstract

Generic skills play a vital role in increasing the employability and marketability of a student. As for the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, UKM, some of these skills are imparted in the assignment given to students called Open Ended Laboratory (OEL). In this OEL assignment, students are required to propose an experiment title based on the general topic given for that particular semester. The students, working in groups of 3 to 4 students, need to determine the objectives, apparatus and methods as well as execute the experiment. A report including results, discussion, conclusion and references is submitted for evaluation. The final presentation of students’ work is organised in a competition poster presentation format. Skills such as communication (oral and written), organisation, teamwork, innovation and creativity were evaluated for this assignment. We discovered that these skills can be nurtured by looking at the marks given by the judges and peer assessment matrices.


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