Factors Influencing Students' Performance on Affective Skills

Affective domain in learning consists of feeling, emotion and attitude, which has received less attention in engineering education research as compared to cognitive domain. Assessment on affective domain is commonly associated with communication and teamwork elements. The attainment for program outcomes (POs) under affective domain can be measured directly using verbal presentation as an effective assessment tool. However, the development of affective characteristics in the learning process requires student motivation or desire to learn. This paper identifies the important factors influencing student performance on affective skills using three (3) culminating engineering courses namely: Final Year Project 1, Final Year Project 2 and Integrated Design Project based on the PO related to communication skills. The findings indicated that lecturers contributed to student performance on affective skill by giving encouragement, providing prompt and quick response time to the students. In addition, a conducive classroom environment allowed freedom for students in giving opinions and gave them enjoyment and comfort. Majority of the respondents indicated that they acquired the communication skills under affective domain namely; the ability to communicate and deliver information effectively, demonstrate good presentation skills and keep audience engagement during presentation. Direct attainment showed that the students passed the PO designed for these culminating courses. Thus, adequate preparation and practices prior to presentation and also conducive environment increased student confidence in classroom. Although some of the findings were not in line with the previous studies, the findings provide a reasonable preliminary setting for future studies. Thus, this study is important to improve the affective elements attained by the students and how assessment is carried out effectively.