Assessment for the 21st century in higher education institution: way forward

Malaysia’s education system has been known as being very exam oriented; written exams have always been our culture in assessing learners’ understanding, knowledge and skills. However, with the 21st century, not all can be assessed through examination since the results do not really reflect their competency especially in their employment skills (ie, social skills, critical thinking skills). This ‘wrong signal’ given to the employers are said to be affecting the construction industry as most employers believed that the graduates were still far from reaching their expectations and demands. Therefore, by using content-based analysis, this paper will make a comparative study on various types of assessment used in HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) and tease out the similarities and differences in embedding each assessment in the classroom management. From the findings, it was found that the existing types of assessment contain some challenges in the process of implementing it towards learners. Due to this reason, it has been considered failed to fully measured the learners’ competency in soft skills. Looking into all issues, a conceptual framework related to holistic assessment is proposed, which aims to improve learners’ competency for better employability skills. Keywords: Assessment, employability skills, learners’ competency, HEI