COMMON UNDERSTANDING OF CREDITS

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COMMON UNDERSTANDING OF CREDITS

• Workshop to improve the academic credit system in
  Malaysia

31 Jan-2 February 2005
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Why we need common understanding

• Secure standards of qualification
• Facilitate credit transfer within and among
  institutions inside outside the country
• Facilitate credit transfer within and among
  sectors skills, vocational technical, academic
  professional
• Facilitate credit transfer between formal, non
  formal informal education
• Facilitate mutual recognition of qualifications

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Current practice

• Variation among and within institutions
• Required student activities outside the contact
  hours not well accounted for vary considerably
  in the calculation of credits, especially those
  related to lab and field work
• Need common understanding in calculating credits
  for industrial attachments, research or project
  work, field assignments etc
• Less value placed on student centered, hands-on
  approaches, e.g 4 hours of PBL/week 2 credits
  only but 1 hr lecture/week 1 credit

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Common Understanding Credit is.

• A MEASURE OF THE TOTAL ACADEMIC LOAD OR LEARNING
  EFFORT OR VOLUME OF LEARNING A STUDENT MUST
  UNDERTAKE TO ACHIEVE A DEFINED GROUP OF LEARNING
  OUTCOMES
• all forms of learning in hours contact hours,
  work-based, research, experiential, practical
  activities, private study, preparation for
  assessment etc
• expressed as Minimum Total Credits (specify
  range) for the qualification level, the field and
  exit level of program.

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1. Qualification Levels

• Certificate
• Diploma
• Advanced Diploma
• Graduate Certificate Diploma
• Bachelor with Honours
• Masters
• Postgraduate Certificate Diploma
• Doctoral/PhD

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. Learning Outcomes

• The LEVELS are distinguished from each other
  principally by learning outcomes
• Other distinguishing characteristics may include
• minimum entrance requirement,
• typical duration
• cumulative duration in full time equivalent
  (part-time courses)
• Note distinguishing characteristics need to be
  reviewed in light of flexible education modeled
  on Life Long Learning

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Learning Outcomes

• Abilities in various domains of learning that
  students are expected to demonstrate as evidence
  of competency.
• Mastery of body of knowledge (depth, breadth and
  relative difficulty of specific content)
• practical or psychomotor skills (range and
  complexity),
• scientific method, critical thinking, problem
  solving, autonomy in decision-making
• communication skills, leadership and team work
• information management and life long learning
  skills
• personal attributes, ethics, shared values and
  professionalism
• social responsibility and accountability

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Leaning outcomes
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. Purpose /character of qualification

• At the same level, there may be different nature
  or purpose of qualifications example
• MASTERS LEVEL
• scholarship (Masters by course work)
• preparation for research and deepening subject
  knowledge (Masters by research)
• Research scholarship (combined coursework
  research)
• professional and practice-related (e.g postgrad
  Medicine)
• CERTIFICATE LEVEL
• skills training
• occupational oriented
• preparation for higher education.

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. Credit or academic load

• measure of the learning effort or volume of
  learning a student must undertake to achieve a
  defined group of learning outcomes
• all forms of learning in hours - lectures,
  tutorial, work-based, research, experiential,
  practical activities, private study, preparation
  for assessment etc
• formal contact hours additional hours of work
  students are expected to undertake on their own.
  
• Qualifications with the same name have the same
  minimum total credit requirement.
• Qualifications at the same level may have
  different credit requirements (e.g between MMed,
  MS and MOG).

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Specification of credits

• Range of credits for each qualification level
  (bachelor, masters etc)
• Minimum credits for a field at a particular level
  (Medicine, Engineering, Science)
• Minimum credits at exit level
• Limit total credit that can be transferred
• Eliminate practice of condonement
• Some flexibility in program design

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NOTIONAL CREDITS
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Example from EU

• 1 credit 25 hours (countries can determine
  their own notional hours, depending on the
  structure of the education system)
• UK 1 credit10 hours
• Hungary 1 credit18 hours
• Undergraduate program 180-240 credits
  (1200-1800 hours/year, average 1500 hours)
• Postgraduate programme 60-120 credit
• 1 year 60 credits (30 credits for 6 months and
  20 credits for a term or trimester)

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Notional hours for Malaysia

• 1 credit40 hours
• Equivalence Example
• 120 credits for Bachelor (Hons) in Malaysia 4800
  hours is equivalent to
• 480 credit for Bachelor (Hons) in Scotland (4800
  hours)
• 192 credits for Bachelor in in EU system (range
  from 4500-6000 hours)
• 360 credits for Bachelor (Gen) 1 Honours year
  in England

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Academic load per week

• Need to cap the student workload per week to
  allow them sufficient time for other campus
  activities self development
• Allows flexibility in determining program length
  depending on policies for academic
  year/semester/term which vary because of the
  diversity in imported programs

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Recommended academic load per week

• 8 hours a day for 5 days
• 6 hours at the weekend
• Total 46 hours
• Exceptions to professional courses which may have
  higher (punishing) workload
• For a 14 week semester, the load is 644 hours
  (16 credits)

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Program duration

• Depends on
• minimum total credit
• organisation of the academic calender
• Example
• Bachelor (Hons) 120 credits (4800 hours)
• No of weeks required4800/46104.3 weeks
• If 1 semester 14 weeks, duration of program7.5
  semesters
• If semester is 17 weeks, duration of program is 6
  semesters.

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Advantages of credits based on student activity

• distributes academic load evenly within a program
• eliminates confusion due to institutional
  differences in interpretation of contact hours
  and academic semesters or year.
• facilitates credit transfer
• gives autonomy to the institutions to creatively
  design programs to meet various needs
  characteristics of students (full time, part
  time, weekend, distance, e-learning,
  problem-based, hands-on etc)

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Group Discussion

• Discuss
• the definition of credit
• Notional credit hours
• Workload per week
• Recommend guidelines for estimating private
  study and experiential learning (e.g industrial
  attachment) state the basis for such
  recommendations (e.g due to differences in the
  field or qualification level)

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• TERIMA KASIH