State university education system:

Focus on student-centric learning

By Ranil Wijayapala

The university education system has always been a controversial topic in Sri Lanka when it comes to the subject of employability of graduates produced through the state university network specially graduates from the arts faculties. Every year, governments in power are compelled to recruit many of these unemployed graduates to State service for the sake of solving the issue of unemployment among graduates passing out from State universities.

It has been observed that there is a huge gap between the kind of graduates produced through the university system and the opportunities available in the job market. Many of the graduates seem to be unfit for the jobs available in the job market and as a result many private sector companies are reluctant to absorb them despite their educational qualifications.

To resolve this issue, the Higher Education Ministry is now making an endeavour to make the degree programs of the universities more focused and make the graduates passing out from universities more skilled and talented to find direct employment after graduation, by introducing an outcome based education system.

Changes

Secretary to the Ministry of Higher Education, Dr. Sunil Jayantha Nawaratne in an interview with the Sunday Observer said that the Ministry has decided to introduce changes to the university education system as they found that many of the arts faculty graduates find it difficult to get jobs after graduation compared to graduates from the engineering and medical faculties.

According to a survey done by the Higher Education Ministry in 2012 on the percentage of students employed at the time of graduation, it has been found that 95 percent of the engineering faculty graduates and 92 percent of the medical faculty students were employed at the time of graduation.

About 70 percent of the agriculture faculty graduates, 69 percent of the science faculty graduates and 65 percent of the management faculty graduates were employed at the time of graduation.

"When it comes to the arts faculty the employment rate dropped to 20 percent and we saw a drastic difference between the management and arts faculty students in terms of employment," he added.

When it comes to engineering and medical faculties they target an outcome from their graduates and they know that they are producing a doctor, engineer, mechanical engineer or electrical engineer.

"But in the case of the arts faculty there is no outcome and it is not focused. The lecturer delivers a lecture on Sinhala Language, Political Science, Sociology or any other subject students don't know the purpose of learning those subjects and the lecturers too don't know the purpose. Therefore, we have found that producing a graduate without a purpose is a risk," he said.

Objective

"The graduate programs should target jobs in the market or else we should know the purpose of producing these graduates, because even a Buddhist monk has a purpose when following a degree program though he is not targeting a job. Therefore, each degree program should have an objective or aim and we are preparing our teaching and learning methods, curriculum and evaluation targeting output," Dr. Nawaratne said.

According to this, each degree program should have a clear idea about what kind of person should be produced at the end of three to four years of academic studies.

"For example if we teach Sinhala or English languages we should target to produce a teacher, journalist, news reader or a script writer.

KSAM graduates

To have clear idea regarding the target, a concept called KSAM was developed and each degree program irrespective of the subjects they follow will aim at producing a KSAM graduate.

In this concept, K stands for knowledge and the graduates should be equipped with TK - theoretical knowledge and PK - practical knowledge.

S stands for skills and the graduates should have communication skills, team work and leadership skills, decision-making or problem solving skills, planning and implementation skills, technology and IT skills, creativity and innovative thinking and confidence at the end of their degree program.

"Whatever the speciality of their jobs these skills are common for every one. May be a engineer, may be a journalist or may be a language teacher. Today we see that these skills have been neglected," he said.

"A stands for Attitudes, Values and Vision for life as most of our students should have positive attitudes. They also should have values because sometimes we have doctors but they don't have values and they don't know how to deal with patients. At the same time Vision for Life is also important because every student should have a long-term vision of what they have wish to be," Dr. Nawaratne said.

M stands for mindset or paradigm and it stipulates how he or she pursues work and how they see the world.

Mindset

"This mindset is like a lens and they see through the lens. If the lens is outdated he always believes in his work but does the wrong thing. For example if you have an idea that the world is flat but not round your mindset is wrong and you have to update your knowledge.

For that you have to study continuously. Continuous learning is important. Every graduate should continuously update their knowledge and mindset. Every month, every year, because the world is changing fast."

"To produce KSAM graduates we should change from teacher-centred learning to student-centred learning because students have to learn to become KSAM graduates but not the teachers. The teacher can only guide and mentor them to achieve that," he said. That is why we are targeting KSAM type of graduate.

In the outcome based education system, we have program objectives and outcomes and KSAM is the program outcome and the degree program should aim at equipping students with all these."Every course should deliver an outcome. For example if you want to become a journalist you need language skills, graphic design knowledge and writing skills. These skills will be given to them through language courses, graphic design courses and also through a creative writing course. Likewise various skills have to be developed through these courses," Dr. Nawaratne said.

To get the right outcome we have to redesign the curriculum, teaching methods, learning process, evaluation and focus on the continuous improvement of the students.

Evaluation process

"First we have to redesign the curriculum targeting outcome and change the teaching and learning process from teacher-centred learning to student-centred learning.

We also have to change the evaluation process to ensure that students will achieve the program objective. Then we also need to ensure the continuous improvement of the students," Dr. Nawaratne said.

In this scenario student-centred learning is the key and universities are now in the process of switching the teaching and learning process into student-centred learning from the older teaching paradigm.

"In the older paradigm teacher is the one who reads the books, prepares the slides, presentations and the students become passive observers. They are not active. That is a totally outdated method and the new paradigm is student centred paradigm and its learning paradigm," Dr. Nawaratne added.

Under the learning paradigm student are the people who learns and teacher is there only to guide the student and mentor the student and assure that the students are having those key elements of KSAM.

Student centred learning

In achieving those objectives teachers do not deliver lectures. If he has a hundred students they will be divided into ten groups and make sure that students are not learning alone and they are learning with the other students. Every student will be given a text book if possible.

"When they come to the class next time as groups or individuals they should read the chapter and understand it and come prepared to do a presentation. Then the lecturer can randomly select a student and ask him to make the presentation. To face this situation every student has to be prepared for the lesson. So they need to improve IT skills to be prepared for the presentation," he said.

Likewise, there are so many learning methods such as research-based learning, inquiry-based learning, problem-solving learning and teachers can make use these methods to do the lessons and evaluate students and improve their skills.For those things they can give marks but not for the final exam.

The final exam will only have 40 marks. Of the balance sixty 10 marks can be given for attendance and the balance 50 marks for individual assignments and team work.

"According to this method students have to learn and do research. Then their confidence will improve. Teachers also learn from the students," he said.

Class room development

"To implement this we have given instructions to the universities to allocate enough money to facilitate student centred learning. Under this funds will be allocated for class room development and they should be equipped with a multimedia projector and laptop which can be used by the students.

At least one or two text books should be given to the students per semester but students cannot take it home but should keep it in the classroom or the library," he said explaining this system which is being implemented in the state universities countrywide.

"To fully implement the program, university teachers have to be educated about this new method, curriculum and teacher learning process has to be revised. And evaluation has to be changed. All these things are happening now in the universities at present."We also plan to have a inter-university competition to select the best outcome-based education department, Faculty and University.

A gift of Rs. 1 million will be given to each department of each university and Rs. 5 million for the best faculty. We will give a presidential award for the best university with a cash price of Rs. 10 million," Dr. Nawaratne added."We have around 5,000 academics and they are happy and even the students are happy. When we do this the students will become real human capital. Under the present system they are just listeners and they sit and write down notes and at the exam they rewrite. No innovation and no critical thinking. They do not question the teachers. Since this is a new thing it will be implemented slowly and implementation is the key but we are happy that most the universities are accepting this method," Dr. Nawaratne said.