Application of Rasch Model in Measuring Students’ Performance in Civil Engineering Design II Course

This paper describes a measurement model used to measure the students’ performances in the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). The assessment model was developed based on students mark entries together with Rasch Measurement Model; it can be used to measure the students’ performances in term of course outcomes (COs) for the Civil Engineering Design II Course (KH 4253).This assessment was conducted to all 64 final year students in the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering (JKAS), Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia that have registered for the course in second semester of session 2010/2011. This study shows that Rasch Model can precisely classify and tabulates the students; i.e. Person and Items on a Distribution Map (PIDM) according to their achievements. Comparative analysis against the conventional distribution marks shows that Rasch Measurement Model was found to give almost the same results on the students’ achievement and reveals the true degree of learning abilities of the students even with small number of sampling unit