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Skills Development among Undergraduates at a Malaysian University
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Copyright Year | 2007 |
| Abstract | In a global economy, higher education sustainability in educational terms relies on the development of both knowledge and skills among university graduates. This is because the mere possession of knowledge of the academic subject matter is no longer sufficient to sustain the students’ future in the twenty first century. Although much of the documented institutional research on higher education skills development has been undertaken in developed countries, it is equally important for developing countries. Accordingly this study reports an institutional research project conducted within a Malaysian university to examine students’ viewpoints on generic and other aspects of skills development. Quantitative perceptions of the graduating students (i.e. final semester) of Bachelor degree programmes at the university are considered. Potential areas of future curriculum reforms and changes and further institutional research are also addressed. Introduction There had been evolving interest in Australia during the early nineties in the field of generic and other skills (Ng, Heskin & Sharma, 1994; 1993), as a result of the emerging quality industry in higher education. Generic skills are defined by a Higher Education Council (1992) document as the personal attributes and values that ought to be acquired during university education, irrespective of the students’ disciplines. The Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), which is widely used in Australia was developed by Professor Paul Ramsden (refer to University of Tasmania, undated). The CEQ was first administered Australia‐wide in 1993 and is generally recognised as a reliable and valid measure of the perceptions of university graduates on their courses of study. An interest in skills development appears to be a world‐wide movement, as previously indicated with growing interest in higher education quality related issues. For instance, in the United Kingdom Desforges (1994) identified a number of personal transferable skills for implementation at the University of Exeter. He noted certain environmental and associated developments as impetus for the overt recognition of skills development in universities including: Greater appreciation of the educational advantages of such skills for both students and staff teaching them. Employers expectation of such skills in university graduates and the tougher employment market where the possession of certain skills could well provide a competitive advantage to the students completing their programme at the university. The Higher Education Funding Council’s quality assessment expectations. Desforges (1994) identified some broad categories of the so‐called transferable skills including self‐management, learning skills, communication, teamwork, problem‐solving and data‐handling skills. Some of these skills are incorporated in the CEQ Generic Skills questionnaire, including teamwork, problem‐solving and written communication. The importance of skills development and their inclusion in the higher education curriculum is of on‐going interest that did not go away in the nineties as is evidenced by some more recent papers on the topic, again emanating from the more developed countries. For instance, Fallows and Steven (2000) suggest that it is no longer adequate for new graduates to simply acquire knowledge of an academic subject. They suggest that broader skills including retrieval and handling of information, communication and presentation, planning and problem‐solving and social development and interaction are also critical for graduate employment in the 21st century. Similarly, the Learning and Teaching Support Network (2002) emphasise the importance of key, core or generic skills development both at secondary and higher education levels in order to permit graduates to function more effectively in the world of work and in life more generally. A number of skills identified by the UK Qualifications and Curriculum Authority are mentioned, including communication, information technology, application of number, working with others, improving own learning and performance and problem solving. A number of these skills will be considered in this research either through the CEQ Generic Skills questions or other questions synthesised from the literature search. Methodology A questionnaire on student perceptions of knowledge, skills and personal development in the university was developed and administered to 251 final semester degree students (out of 331 students enrolled), from two faculties, i.e., Faculty of Accountancy and Faculty of Business Management at Universiti Teknologi MARA Perlis (UiTM Perlis), Malaysia. The sample (75.8% of the population) were from four different programmes, as follows: 61 68 Bachelor of Business Administration (Finance) 58 69 Bachelor of Business Administration (Human Resource Management) 33 56 Bachelor of Business Administration (Marketing) 99 138 Bachelor of Accountancy (BAcc) Number of Respondents Enrollment Programme The aims of the research project included: 1. To ascertain the undergraduate students’ perceptions of knowledge, skills and personal development in a Malaysian university using a five point Likert Scale. 2. To ascertain students’ ratings on the Australian Course Experience Questionnaire focusing on generic skills. The survey questionnaire included demographic and related student characteristics, their perceptions of the knowledge and skills development (including the six generic skills items from the CEQ) and related issues. It is noted that the CEQ questionnaire within the Australian context is usually applied to graduates and not current students, as is the case in this study. This constitutes a limitation of the present study. However, in mitigation there are a number of constraints and the like facing the researchers within the Malaysian context. First, the accessibility of course completions files, contact details are inaccessible and sometimes inaccurate; it is noted that even within the Australian context often course completions are equated to “graduates” due often to the lack of accurate details on course completers in universities. Second, there may be some value in applying the questionnaire to current students. For instance, once the students have graduated it is impossible to use their feedback on generic skills acquisition to remedy any gaps in the development of those skills. However, such feedback could prove useful in making curriculum and related changes to enhance the generic skills of students while they are still on campus, in order to traverse any identified gaps. Further, the students included in the present study are in their final semester, meaning that the differences between this sample and graduates may well be relatively minimal. It is noted that the Cronbach’s alpha for the generic skills items (0.82) and for other knowledge and skills (0.79) were both above 0.70. According to Sekaran (2000) provided the Cronbach’s alpha value is greater than 0.7, the survey instrument can be considered to exhibit internal consistency reliability, thus resulting in a degree of confidence in the survey instrument used in the study. Survey analysis Demographic Characteristics Table 1 below presents the age of students. It suggests that the modal age of students was 23 years, with 63% less than 24 years old. This is consistent with the profile of the undergraduates at this institution. Table 1. Age of respondents 0.87 2 27 0.43 1 26 6.06 14 25 29.87 69 24 44.16 102 23 17.75 41 22 0.87 2 21 % Students Frequency Age Table 2 furnishes information on the gender profile of the respondents. As expected just over three quarters of the respondents were female students. Again, this is in keeping with the composition of students at UiTM that is female dominated. Table 2. Gender of respondents 76.09 175 Female 23.91 55 Male % Students Frequency Gender Tables 3 and 4 provide data on work experience of students. Given that the students are relatively older, nearly 39% of the respondents have had working experience of some sort, mainly of part‐time work. Table 3. Work experience of respondents 61.30 141 No 38.70 89 Yes % Students Frequency Work experience? Table 4. Work type of respondents 40.23 35 Full‐time 59.77 52 Part‐time % Students Frequency Work Type Student Perceptions of Generic Skills Table 5 provides students’ perceptions of their generic skills formation from UiTM’s Accountancy and Business programmes. It reveals that overall nearly 82% of the respondents agreed that they had acquired the six elements of the Course Experience Questionnaires generic skills. In terms of the individual elements, the students expressed greatest confidence in terms of the ability to work as team members (90%) and the least confidence regarding the capacity to tackle unfamiliar problems (71%). Comparison of the data contained in Table 5 with the Australian National results for the discipline of “Business, Law and Economics” (see Mahat & Hourigan, 2006) in respect to 2005 for Australian and International students studying in the country permits the following observations: In terms of problem‐solving skills formation, the Malaysian students (81%) were ahead of their Australian (66%) and international colleagues (62%). Regarding analytical skills again the Australian (70%) and the international graduates (65%) were lagging behind their Malaysian counterparts from UiTM. (78%). With respect to the ability to work as a team member, again the Malaysian students (90%) were well ahead of Australian (54%) and international graduates studying in Australia (61%) ‐ by a very lar |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.aair.org.au/app/webroot/media/pdf/AAIR%20Fora/Forum2007/Kaur.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
