A hundred engineering students are about to sit for a test that represents the first step towards a global measure of the knowledge passed on to graduates.


Ten final-year students at 10 universities will be asked to solve problems as Australia trials the engineering part of a proposed Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development test of higher education outcomes across cultures.

 

"Rather than assess achievement against curriculum, this test looks at whether students have the capacity to use acquired knowledge and skills to solve concrete, novel and real-world problems," the OECD says.

 

The Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes aims to create a university equivalent to the OECD's global tests for school performance, the PISA tests, which figure in policy and political debate about education.

 

Further information about the AHELO is available here.