An Invitation to an F2F Workshop on the iOBE Software

SEEING BEYOND THE STANDARD OUTCOMES ASSESSMENT

An iOBE Workshop @ USM, Penang | National Training Week 2025

📅 Friday, 20 June 2025

🕗 8:30 AM – 10:30 AM

📍 Auditorium 3, Kompleks Eureka, USM

👋 A Warm Invitation to Educators and Program Coordinators

If you're an educator or program coordinator who’s looking for a better way to understand and improve your student assessment results, I’d like to personally invite you to join a focused, face-to-face workshop at USM Penang.

This session is part of National Training Week (NTW) 2025, and it’s designed to help you rethink how you interpret student outcomes—with the help of a powerful yet easy-to-use software tool called The Integrated OBE (iOBE) Software.

❓ Why This Workshop Matters

Let’s be honest — many of us track student results using averages, total marks, or spreadsheet tables. But often, the outcomes data we collect just sits there — unanalyzed, uncommunicated, and underutilized.

What if we could do more with that data? Imagine turning it into simple, visual graphs that you could share with your students—showing how they performed in a midterm test, a final exam, a project, or even the course overall. These visuals can help students see not just their individual scores, but also where they stand in relation to the rest of the class.

When performance is made visible and meaningful, students often feel more motivated to improve, and educators gain clearer insights into how to adapt their teaching strategies.

This workshop is designed to help you realize that potential — by showing you how to identify patterns, communicate outcomes, and make informed improvements using easy-to-read graphs generated with the iOBE software.

💡 What iOBE Brings to the Table

The iOBE software is a smart, lightweight, and versatile tool designed specifically for educators to compute, analyze, and visualize student learning outcomes at both the course and program levels.

At the course level, you can:

• Assess outcomes from tests, assignments, projects, exams, and the overall course
• Generate compact graphs and statistical summaries for quick decision-making
• Communicate results directly to students using visual tools like box plots and population graphs

At the program level, iOBE scales up to:

• Aggregate results from multiple courses
• Support structured CQI and accreditation reportin
• Provide visual clarity when presenting outcomes across course groups

Whether you’re working solo on your course or contributing to program-level reviews, iOBE gives you the insights you need—fast.

🧠 What You'll Experience in the 2-Hour Session

This isn't a theory-only session. It’s designed to be interactive and immediately useful, broken into three engaging parts:

1. Conceptual Session: We’ll start by revisiting the fundamentals of outcome-based assessment, and explore how computed outcomes (rather than raw marks alone) offer deeper insights into student learning and course performance.
2. Software Demonstration: A guided walk-through of how the iOBE software works, using real or sample datasets. You’ll see how outcomes are mapped, processed, and visualized.
3. Practical Hands-On Session: You’ll try it out yourself—entering sample data, generating graphs, and discussing how the outputs can inform your teaching and CQI strategies.

🎯 Who Should Join?

This session is designed for:

• Lecturers, educators, and program coordinators at tertiary institutions
• Anyone involved in course assessment, CQI documentation, or accreditation processes
• Educators who want to present assessment results more clearly to students in their classes
• Those new to OBE tools — you don’t need technical expertise to benefit

If you’re curious about improving how you see, interpret, and act on student outcomes, this session is for you.

📝 How to Register

This workshop is part of National Training Week (NTW) 2025, and registration is open now through the official portal:

🔗 https://www.nationaltrainingweek.gov.my

📌 Once you’re on the site:

• Click on “Individual Login” (or create an account if you're new)
• Go to the Courses section
• Search for “Universiti Sains Malaysia”
• Find the session titled “Seeing Beyond the Standard Outcomes Assessment”

Click ENROL NOW to secure your spot!

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Making Assessment Data Meaningful

How Compact Visualizations Support Teaching in Higher Education

As academics in higher education, we’re used to dealing with extensive data from exams, coursework, and projects. Often, though, this valuable data ends up in detailed tables and spreadsheets—thorough but sometimes overwhelming. While we rely heavily on this information, its presentation in numeric form can make it challenging to quickly recognize patterns, interpret performance accurately, or take timely action to improve teaching.

A more effective way to approach assessment results is to visualize the data in compact, meaningful forms. Graphs generated by the iOBE software such as box plots and population plots (see the figure below, plotted against program outcomes) simplify complex information into clear, readable formats, highlighting crucial insights quickly and efficiently.

These visualizations enable educators to quickly identify key patterns and potentially concerning trends in student performance, guiding them in refining and improving their teaching and learning strategies.

Additionally, if the data indicates performance issues arising primarily from student-specific challenges rather than instructional factors, educators can use these insights to provide targeted support, helping students understand their own areas for improvement and encouraging them to proactively engage in enhancing their academic performance.

Why Spreadsheet Tables Can Be Limiting

Most of us have experienced the struggle of sorting through dense spreadsheets. When results are presented only as raw numbers in tables — or reduced to simplistic bar charts that display just a single metric, such as average values — it becomes difficult to grasp the full picture of what’s really happening in our classes. Essential questions may come up but remain tricky to answer clearly:

• How is the overall performance in my course?
• Which learning outcomes are consistently challenging for students?
• Are recent adjustments in teaching methods having any measurable impact?

Answering these questions is considerably easier when the data is presented visually, compact with rich information, allowing quick identification of meaningful trends.

The Power of Visual Summaries

Compact visualizations, like box plots and population distribution graphs, help educators to rapidly understand and interpret data:

• Box plots instantly reveal performance ranges, median values, and variability, highlighting strengths and areas needing attention at a glance.
• Population plots clearly illustrate how each student's achievement compares to the entire class, making it easier to provide targeted support or adjustments.

Such visuals not only enhance individual reflection but also facilitate productive conversations among colleagues and with students themselves.

Effective Across Different Academic Scales

One notable strength of visualizing assessment data is the flexibility it provides across different academic scales:

• Program-level: Visual summaries help coordinators identify long-term trends and achievement patterns, crucial for program reviews, curriculum adjustments, and accreditation.
• Course-group level: A group of lecturers who manage multiple related courses can collectively analyze outcomes, spot common difficulties, and align their teaching practices.
• Single course-level: Individual lecturers gain clearer insights into their semester results, facilitating more precise and timely teaching interventions.
• Micro-level (tests and assignments): Visuals are even useful at the smallest scale, clarifying student responses to particular tests (see the graphs below, plotted against Problem-solving Steps) or assignments, thereby directly informing teaching strategies.

This scalability supports reflective and evidence-based teaching practices, enabling lecturers to continuously refine their approaches.

Driving Better Conversations Through Clearer Data

Ultimately, the greatest value of presenting assessment data visually is its capacity to spark meaningful, practical conversations. With clearer data, educators can quickly pinpoint issues, discuss strategies, and adjust their teaching effectively. Students also benefit from visual clarity—understanding their performance in a broader context empowers them to actively participate in improving their learning.

When we move beyond traditional numeric tables toward concise visual representations, we strengthen the connection between data-driven insights and practical teaching strategies—benefiting educators and learners alike.

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