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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