Effect of COVID-19 pandemic in service learning process of Industrial Ergonomics course

Ummi Noor Nazahiah Abdullah1, Nurul Ikhmar Ibrahim2, Norashiken Othman3

University Malaysia Perlis, Main Campus, 02600, Arau, Malaysia1,2,3

Biomechanic-Sport Engineering Research Centre, UniMAP Main Campus, Arau, Malaysia1,3

nazahiah@unimap.edu.my 1

Page 92-110   |   Vol. 7 No. 2 2022   |    Available online on 30 Dec 2022

Abstract

Abstract: University Malaysia Perlis supports the ergonomics requirements and practice in industry by teaching the Industrial Ergonomics (IE) course for Manufacturing Engineering students in Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Technology. The teaching and evaluation process in IE course experienced multiple changes due to the Service Learning Malaysia- University for Society (SULAM) requirements and rapidly transform from physical to virtual learning due to COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 year end. This paper aims for investigating the effect of service learning implementation and COVID-19 pandemic in teaching and evaluation process of IE course. The pedagogy methods were applied in IE in the academic year 2018 and it was changed in service learning approach in the year 2019 and 2020 due to SULAM requirements. The main findings in this study show that the changes in the teaching and evaluation methods due to service learning implementation does effect the course satisfaction, teaching satisfaction, course outcomes (COs) and final students’ grade in positive form even though there were major challenges happened in service learning implementation especially in academic year 2019. The study also finds out that COVID-19 does effect the course and teaching satisfaction score, but it almost not contribute to significant negative impact to the COs and students’ final grade. This paper gives significant contribution for preparing the teaching and evaluation methods for future students in IE course for SULAM program specifically and for the similar course generally especially in uncertainty conditions such as pandemic and endemic scenario.

Keywords

Industrial Ergonomics, SULAM, COVID-19, service learning, virtual learning

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