THE SPA-7 FRAMEWORK: SUSTAINING COURSE OUTCOME ATTAINMENT THROUGH CONSTRUCTIVE ALIGNMENT IN MATLAB/SIMULINK LABORATORY MODULES FOR A LINEAR SYSTEM COURSE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35631/IJMOE.830043Keywords:
Constructive Alignment, Outcome-Based Education, Course Outcome Attainment, Matlab/Simulink, Engineering Laboratory Assessment, Seven-Pillar Software-Based Practical AssessmentAbstract
Outcome-Based Education (OBE) requires every Course Outcome (CO) to meet a minimum Key Performance Indicator (KPI) threshold each semester. Despite the maturity of these monitoring tools, little attention has been given in the engineering education literature to a fundamental question: do decisions about assessment design lead to stable CO attainment across cohorts and semesters. Most studies do not provide guidance on how to design software-based laboratory assessments to ensure consistency of CO results over time. This paper presents the development and empirical validation of the Seven-Pillar Software-Based Practical Assessment (SPA-7) framework, a constructive-alignment framework that breaks down Biggs and Tang’s principle into seven design pillars for software-based laboratory assessments in engineering courses. A retrospective documentary analysis of institutional Continuous Development of Learning (CDL) and Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) data over four consecutive semesters (October 2022 to August 2024) was performed for two diploma cohorts at Universiti Teknologi MARA Cawangan Pulau Pinang to generate eight cohort-semester observations. The seven SPA-7 pillars are based on the official manual Practical Task ESE241, and are aligned with principles in the established learning science literature (constructive alignment, dual coding, cognitive load and formative assessment) and corroborated with empirical performance data for the practical CO (CO2, aligned with Program Outcome PO5). Results show that CO2 results ranged from 82.1% to 95.8% across all eight observations, with a cross-cohort mean of 89.7%, and all observations exceeded the institutional KPI threshold of 65%. The narrow distribution across different cohort characteristics suggests that the framework may support stable and outcome-relevant assessment performance. The SPA-7 framework provides a theoretically sound and empirically substantiated model for maintaining CO performance in software-based laboratory assessments. The framework also supports simultaneous evidence generation for both COs and corresponding POs, improving efficiency in Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC) Standard 2020 accreditation reporting. Furthermore, it is posited to be applicable to other engineering courses where analytical solutions and simulated outputs can be compared.
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