Assessment of Learning Domains to Improve Student’s Learning in Higher Education

Objectives: To discuss the behavior of three different learning domains and effective assessment of each domain. Material and Methods: Learning domains have always played an important role in evaluating the student’s knowledge and skills. The learning domains can be incorporated while designing the Course Outcomes (CO) of all the courses in a programme, however, the assessment of learning domains practiced in many higher education programmes resulted in vague assessment methods and as a result, they failed to show concrete Continual Quality Improvement (CQI). Hence the authors have developed an assessment method which is more holistic to assess the cognitive, affective and psychomotor behaviors individually. Results: It is expected that the proposed method will allow one to objectively evaluate whether the students have achieved the criteria, subsequently facilitating CQI implementation within the programme and produce qualifi ed graduates. Conclusion: The proposed assessment method for learning domains will encourage the readers to use reliable and valid assessments in higher education by discriminating between assessing skills, knowledge and attitudes. This paper will inspire its readers to enhance association of teaching and learning. Application: Though the examples used in the proposed method are taken from engineering education, this proposed assessment method can be applied to any higher education programmes in Medical, Pharmaceutical technology, Physiotherapy, Bio-technology, etc.

Key Words; affective ; assessment ; cognitive ; learning domains ; psychomotor .