Assessment of psychomotor domain in a problem-based concrete labrotary

A rising awareness of the importance of professional skills for engineering students has led to increased attention being paid in engineering schools to the development of students’ psychomotor skills. In the past, assessment of psychomotor skills was seen as being less important than assessment of knowledge and cognitive skills. Thus, this study discusses methods of implementation of psychomotor skills assessments in the teaching and learning process in concrete laboratory experiments. A combination of traditional and problem-based techniques of teaching is used, including lectures, tasks (using a problem-based learning format), flip demos, lab work, reports and surveys. Finally an overall assessment is conducted. Comparisons are made between the results obtained through psychomotor assessment and the final examination marks. It can therefore be concluded that the psychomotor domain of each student can be successfully measured. In comparing the results for psychomotor and cognitive performance using quadrant analysis, four categories of students can be observed, which are exam-based, technical-based, well-balanced and poor.