Do the Students Evaluate Correctly: A case study, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Universities are predominantly engaged in two activities: teaching and research. Teaching is defined as dissemination of knowledge and research is defined as generating knowledge. Both activities are equally important. There is lot of criticism from several quarters on the passive role played by the universities in Sri Lanka with regard to teaching and research. The private sector which provides most of job opportunities for the graduates who pass out from university are not satisfied with their quality. The primary objective of the university apart from teaching is to carry out research. But the national universities are not satisfies with their research contribution. There are several criticisms levels of the graduates recently produced by the national universities. The critics’ questioned about the application of skills and the evaluation of skills of the graduates. Others argue that their English proficiency is low and their lack of computer literacy. The criticisms made by these groups are still valid with regard to the graduates in the Art Stream. Today it seems that there is kind of threat or competition to the National Education System (NES). Here is an Alternative Education System (AES) developed by the private sector from primary education to basic degree and postgraduate education. The huge demand and the profitability in the education sector may be strengthened further from such a development. The criticism on national university education may have got some backing support to increase the demand of the private sector opportunities. The criticism against the university education has been taken in to consideration by the interested authorities. In finding solutions one can identify two problems namely lack of proficiency of English and lack of computer literacy. Generally, it can be argued that making graduands acquainted with skills to match the outside demand is the solution for this problem. Universities are not bound to generate a workforce for companies whether they are public or private. Universities make men/women to serve the nation with analytical knowledge. In this research, this category of group is named as conventional School (CS). In this scenario, it is very important to understand clearly the problem at first and then arrive at solutions appropriately since it is tightly connected with the NES. We have to consider whether group one or two or both criticisms are correct. Which group MS or CS has made close solutions to reality? These are the problems discussed in this study. This study argues that to build an ideal graduate the teaching and evaluation process should be reconciled to each other and they should gradually go up to a high level of skills. The Bloom’s taxonomy was used to evaluate the student evaluation process of the Faculty of Social Sciences. Question papers related to the first semester of the academic year 2007/2008 were evaluated. The surveys cover all the departments in the faculty and papers at all levels and course unite were considered. The results proved that the process of evaluation is poor; in some areas the standards of the questions set did not pass the first of second stage of Bloom’s Taxonomy.