Alhamdulillah.. Survey Unit FKA granted research grant on EVALUTION ON PROJECT BASED LEARNING IMPLEMENTATION FOR CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENTS IN MALAYSIAN UNIVERSITY by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Following is the executive summary of the research grant.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

“Implementation of Project Based Learning (PtBL) in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia  (UTM) as part of Outcome Based Education (OBE) framework have faced various challenges (i.e revamp on the undergraduate co-curricullum, required high commitments from academicians & faculty and facilities to cater  PtBL activities). This research focused on the effectiveness of PtBL teaching method in an effort to develop the students’ soft skills in tandem with the technical or professional competencies; and problems, challenges and potential improvement in the course. The Survey Camp course which  is offered at year one of a four years civil engineering degree programme in the Faculty of Civil Engineering (FKA), UTM and Faculty of Civil Engineering and Enviroment (FKAAS), Universiti Teknologi Tun Hussein Onn (UTHM) was chosen for this study. It  is a ten days fieldwork  in which the students  will carry out an engineering survey project from field to finish in groups of five to six students supervised by the academic staff. Assessment of the technical aspects was based on the students ability to meet the minimum engineering surveying’s standard whereas the assesment of soft skills was conducted during various sessions of  the survey projects. Survey questionaires were given at the beginning and the end of the course as part of evaluation of the course effectiveness. The research is  expected to evaluate the effectiveness of PtBL in Civil Engineering courses. Soft skills improvement should be seen through the implementation. However, the implementation will be not easy. The problems and difficulties will be guidance on the improvement of teaching methods. This will enable the researcher to established appropirate manual, standard of procedure and quality assessments either in the technical or soft skills on the implementation of course.”