or research assignment, seminars, term papers, dissertation
and thesis for the relevant level of postgraduate training.
The learning opportunities are flexible as they are limitless
as to the choice of methods once the aims and objectives
are achieved. The approximate ratio of theory to practice
should be about 70:30 and the minimum duration of the
courses should range from 12 months to 36 months,
depending on the level of professional training — B.Sc.,
M.Sc. and Ph.D.
6. ASSESSMENT
6.1. Factors Influencing Assessment:
One of the important elements in the curriculum process is
assessment which is the measurement or evaluation of
students performance. This is traditionally done by way of a
final examination which may or may not have any bearing
with the defined aims and objectives, the content, and the
methods of presentation of the content. The behavioural
objectives of a course could be assigned weights indicating
their relative importance and the content of the course
could be developed with these weights in mind. These
weights should therefore be reflected in the assessment.
6.2. Types and Modes of Assessment:
There are many ways of assessing the performance of a
student within the context of the curriculum. Some of these
are listed as follows: Examination, Test, Quiz, Technical or
Term paper, Project, Practical Task, Seminar, Dissertation
and Thesis. These have different modes, for example: the
examination may be closed-book, open-book, take-home,
written, oral, objective type or essay type. A test or quiz
may also be a formal type or impromptu.
There are also three types of assessment: terminal
assessment, periodic assessment and continuous
assessment. Many institutions all over the world are in
favour of continuous assessment because it gives a chance
to do an evaluation of the progress of the student from
start to finish. Where a combination of types of assessment
is employed the relative weights of these items should also
be applied to obtain the overall grade. If the training level
is that of the operators given its objective, the practical
exercises will be given a weight of about 70-80 percent
compared to theory’s 20 percent. Sample assessment
schemes are presented in Table 3A.
6.3. Result of Assessment:
The result of the assessment is important in determining
the progress of students as well as their overall
performance at the terminal point of the course. The result
may also indicate the level of understanding of the content
as well as being a pointer to the success or failure of the
methods adopted in teaching the course. For the sake of
completeness, one should mention here that requirements
must be set up for identifying from the result of the
assessment, when a student has successfully completed the
course and when he has not. His level or grade of success
must also be defined. Table 3B contains sample grading
schemes.
7. FEED BACK AND ANALYSIS
7.1. Types of Feed Back:
Feed back and analysis is an important and separate stage
in the curriculum process which more often than not has
suffered much neglect. In some cases, it has often been
treated as the last stage of assessment, whereas in this
presentation the result of assessment will be regarded as
the first stage or as a type of feed back. The second type of
feed back consists of an evaluation of the course and the
totality of the teacher’s ability and his performance. The
third type is a post-graduation evaluation of the products of
a training course.
7.2. Importance of Feed Back and Analysis:
7.2.1. The result of assessment as mentioned in Section 6.3.
is not only vital in measuring the student's progress and
performance but it is also a response of the student to the
interaction of the various curriculum components — aims
and objectives, content, methods and the mode of
assessment. The result of assessment of the students should
therefore be properly analysed and diagnosed because they
can reveal the sources of strength or weakness in the
various components in the curriculum process.
Amendments arising from this diagnosis are fed back into
the cyclic curriculum process (see Fig. 1).
7.2.2. The evaluation of the course and the teacher's
performance in relationship to the components of the
curriculum is a very crucial part of the curriculum
development. This evaluation is usually done by means of a
set of carefully worded questionnaires about these
components, viz: students may be requested to respond to
questions such as: "Are the aims and objectives clearly
stated by the instructor?" "How do you rate your knowledge
of the course before and after the course?", "Was the
instructor punctual for lectures?", "Are the examples
illustrations, homework assignments adequate?" The
questionnaire usually consists of multiple objective
‘questions with graded answers. The analysis of the results
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