Assessment of Practical and Social Skills in Higher Education

Employers highly value practical and social skills such as capability to work with one's own hands in the related profession, including planning, decision making, time management, communication, initiative, resourcefulness, work as a team leader or as member of a team and so on. However, in educational institutes these capabilities and skills are either neglected or assessed casually. Since these are not assessed systematically and given due importance and weightage and as the students do not get feedback for improvement related to these areas, the students are unable to overcome the shortcomings and develop their practical and social skills. One reason for this negligence is lack of awareness among the teachers about proper methods and techniques for assessment in psychomotor and affective domain related skills and attitudes which is equally important as cognitive domain related skills discussed in the preceding course. Therefore, this course intends to develop these in the teachers to assess the students reliably and validly in affective and psychomotor domain related skills and attitudes so that students may get feedback to develop and improve their practical and social skills along with their attitudes. After undertaking this course teachers in higher education sector will be able to systematically undertake the assessment of practical and social skills of the students so that the confidence of the employers will improve in the assessment system.