Student's problem-based laboratory performance with different assessment approach

Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FKE), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) has implemented problem based laboratory course (PBLab) for final year students since year 2007. Unlike students from other programs in FKE that start their PBLab in the fourth year (final year), students of Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical-Medical Electronics) program start their PBLab one semester earlier, i.e. in their third year of study and have to sit for another PBLab course in their final year. Since the implementation of PBLab for third year students, 2 set of rubrics were used. Set A was based on forth year PBLab that address different program outcomes (PO) than third year one. Meanwhile, to better reflect POs for the third year PBLab, set B was deviced to replace set A and was used since 2009. Since the transformation from rubric set A to set B, no study has been conducted on its effect on student performance. Therefore, this study focuses on student performance with different assessment rubrics and methods. Based from our findings, it is clear that rubrics used in set B together with the use of quantitative assessment reflect students' performance better and hence the decision to replace older version of rubrics (set A) was justified.