Development of Interface for control of the postgraduate students workload in terms of ECTS credits

Abstract

The globalization of education has enhanced the transfer and sharing of knowledge throughout the world. With this rapid and ever expanding globalization, there is a need to form standards that will govern the transfer of knowledge as well as learners from different parts of the world. The European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) is a student-centered standard of describing learning which assigns credits to learning outcomes in accord- ance to the workload of an average learner. However, the ECTS does not provide a clear and logical method that relates the credits to a given workload of lecture hours, exercise hours, laboratory hours, and self-study hours. Therefore, there is need to formulate a mathematical model that will relate the three variables (Lecture, Exercise, Laboratory hours) and output the correct number of self-study hours based on the workload. In this study, the input versus output data were analyzed using Box-Behnken design method to generate a mathematical model that relates the four (4) variables and assigns the correct number of credits to a given workload. With the developed mathemat- ical model, it has been found with two (2) Lecture hours, one (1) Exercise hour, and one (1) Laboratory hour gives the same number of self-study hours like only two (2) Lecture hours and two (2) Laboratory hours which in total translates to five (5) ECTS Credits.