Enhancing the Skill Development of ICT/Computer Science Undergraduates in Large Practical Oriented Classrooms through an Empirical Pedagogical Model In Sri Lankan Context

Abstract

Proper comparison between the skill development of Information and Communication Technology/ Computer Science (ICT/CS) university students of Sri Lanka and the industry requirements is essential in order to achieve an acceptable level of global competency. To leverage the skill development according to the global standards, the quality education which has five dimensions should be attained by the university system. The quality of the Teaching and Learning (TL) process is one dimension of the quality education. The quality development process consists of different sub processes such as curriculum design, pedagogical design, implementation quality, outcomes assessment and resource provision. Quality pedagogical design is one of the most significant components of the quality education. So it is chosen as a way to enhance the skill development of ICT/CS students in this study. In order to enhance the skill development of the students the following main objectives were used: (i) identifying the quality status of the pedagogical design of ICT/CS university education in Sri Lanka against the international standards (ii) specifying the quality gap if there is any, against the international standard, (iii) taking actions to minimize the quality gap and finally develop a model embedded with pedagogical techniques utilizing existing human and physical resources to enhance the quality of ICT/CS Education through an empirical approach to achieve an acceptable level of global competency. This type of empirical exploration is timely applicable to achieve the global competency in ICT/CS education, since Sri Lanka is experiencing a rapid development in the Asian region. To achieve the objectives of this study, it was designed in two phases. In the phase I, international standards of the pedagogical design were compared in order to identify whether there is a deficiency in the quality status of the pedagogical design of the ICT/CS education in the university system of Sri Lanka. In order to identify the current quality status of the local context, a preliminary survey was carried out with 297 student sample. In addition a selected sample of university lecturers were interviewed and class room observation was carried out by the research group. The existing quality gap was driven using gap analysis. In phase II, best possible pedagogical techniques were organized to formulate a model to enhance the skill development of the selected sample of ICT/CS university students, in order to minimize the specified gap in the local context in a sustainable way. Though this study mainly targeted for developing the skills of students, knowledge and attitude development of students also were achieved up to a certain level. Thereby this study involves Knowledge, Skills and v | P a g e Attitudes (KSA) development of ICT/CS students. To drive and test the model large group practical oriented classroom was chosen as the main target since most of the ICT/CS undergraduate courses are practical oriented and consists of large groups. Experimental approach was chosen as the approach to reach the target of the phase II. By incorporating the following pedagogical techniques; critical thinking exercises, activity based learning, collaborative learning, problem-based learning, peer-led team learning, journal writing, research oriented learning techniques and reflective learning, this experiment steered a series of continuous practical based assignments other than the lectures which was conducted using some selected pedagogies within the limited time. Moreover the Bloom‘s taxonomy was used to achieve the leaning outcomes. In the face-to-face lectures, a certain level of learning objectives was achieved due to the time and environmental constraints. The remaining learning outcomes were achieved through the practical sessions. Further, with valid testing, this study uses reflective practice theories, feedback of students and peer lecturers in a cyclic way to fine-tune the proposed model after the each experiment. Not only the quantitative but also the qualitative measures were taken in order to derive correct and accurate results from the evaluation. Ability to test students‘ own knowledge individually, improving the presentation skills, allowing them to learn their own are positive feedback received from the students and the peer lecturers. Results of the experiment I showed that expected skill development can‘t be obtained in the theoretical class and therefore applying the initial pedagogical model in the theoretical class is relatively low. According to the descriptive statistics of results, in the experiment II the average of the results has been increased to 73% from 51.20% and the standard variation has been reduced to 13.11% from 19.18%. In the experiment III the average has been increased to 68.5% from 58.36% and the standard variation has been reduced to 17.60% from 19.76%. According to the inferential statistics of the results, the Wilcoxon signed rank test showed that, the proposed pedagogical model elicited a statistically significant change (p< 0.05), which is positive, in students‘ results of assignments which were conducted in experiment II and experiment III. Furthermore the findings of the study showed that carrying out the practical sessions as assignments is a motivation factor to the students. At the end, this study revealed that the skill development of each individual can be improved through this pedagogical model which saturated with active learning techniques.