Idris Jusoh (right) shares a light moment with students at the ministry’s Hari Raya celebration. — Bernama photo
PUTRAJAYA: One faculty each from five public universities will participate in the pilot programme for the implementation of the new student assessment system called the Integrated Cumulative Grade Point Average (iCGPA), said Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh.
He said it involved about 300 new students for the intake in September 2015, at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK) and Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP).
He said the assessment covered the areas of academic understanding; academic skills; critical and scientific thinking; communication skills; social skills, teamwork and humanity; ethics, morality and professionalism; information management and lifelong learning; management and entrepreneurship; and leadership.
According to him, iCGPA can help overcome the mismatch between the quality of graduates and requirements of employers, as the existing system only measured a student’s academic ability.
“We always hear comments wanting graduates who are holistic, have entrepreneurial characteristics and well balanced. This is what we hope to create through iCGPA,” he told reporters at the ministry’s Hari Raya celebration here yesterday.
Idris said the pilot project was expected to be implemented over three years for fine tuning and enhancement of the system and the effects of the approach to students before extending it to other public universities.
He said the iCGPA system had begun to be studied and developed since 2009 through a collaboration with UKM and UiTM, as well as consultation with the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA).
“The iCGPA grading will be reported in students’ scorecards using the ‘Spider Web’ method which will list down the students’ performance.
“The assessment is not only done through activities in the classroom, but also other activities on campus,” he said.
In the meantime, MQA’s chief executive officer Datuk Prof Dr Rujhan Mustafa said the soft-skills requirement which had been listed, was emphasised in the Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF) but it was not recorded in the student assessment system.
“MQA supports the Higher Education Ministry’s intention to implement the iCGPA, this allows the employer to have an idea of the true potential of graduates,” he said.
iCGPA is one of the initiatives under the first shift of the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education). — Bernama