Towards an Efficient iCGPA System Using iOBE

One of the key initiatives outlined in the Malaysia Education Blueprint for Higher Education is iCGPA, an assessment system that evaluates and reports students' learning outcomes in a comprehensive manner. The new system extracts student and program outcomes in detail, across various learning domains and levels. This capability resonates with the OBE approach in engineering education, where students' competencies must be assessed across multiple outcomes. Nonetheless, the scale of this top-down initiative presents a number of challenges, foremost of which is the cost, in terms of the time, effort, and resources, of developing the system for all tertiary programs nationwide. In addition, despite the iCGPA framework outlined by the Ministry of Higher Education, its interpretation, adoption strategies, and computational models may vary across different program providers. This work addresses the issues above by developing and releasing a free, fully-documented, GUI-based software, and upgrading the software to improve its computational efficiency and presentation of results. The upgrades on the software presented herein have produced significant improvements over its computational performance in accordance with the needs of the iCGPA Initiative and the OBE-based accreditation for engineering programs. Such improvements are necessary to promote its use at the larger scale.