Ly Monirith
CamEd Business School
ACBSP Region 10 Annual Conference
2023, pp. 95 – 104
DOI: https://doi.org/10.62458/CamEd/OAR/ACBSP/95-104
Abstract
The assessment of learning outcomes is vital in ensuring educational quality in the “fitness for purpose” model. The paper reports on the reliability and validity of the Outcome-Specific Questionnaire (OSQ) as a tool to improve learning outcomes. Survey data were collected from 1,210 undergraduate students and assessment data from three prominent institutions in Cambodia. Calibrated paired t-test results show significant increases of student learning from term start to end, and Cronbach’s alpha results confirm high levels of reliability of all OSQs. There is strong evidence that the post-OSQ data for almost half of the courses correlate positively with the faculty assessments although most were conducted online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Together with qualitative data, it can be concluded that the OSQs tend to be valid as long as the assessments by faculty are valid and that their validity cannot be established when the assessments, as benchmarks, are not evidently valid. The study contributes to the minimal literature on and understanding of the rare practice of outcome-based evaluation and improvement of courses collaboratively by students and faculty in an outcome-based education system.
Keywords: Learning outcomes, self-ratings, curriculum development