Notice of RetractionSoft skills implementation in construction management program: A survey of Malaysian public universities

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

The higher education provision in Malaysia has been criticized for not producing graduates with adequate soft skills. On the conviction that the traditional curriculum are inadequate in developing graduates who are more “generally” savvy, the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) has instructed all higher education institutions to change their curriculum to the Outcome-Based Education (OBE) curriculum. The outline of what soft skills to be learnt, how the learning should be delivered and assessed should be in place for the curriculum to be effective. This is more so in the design of construction management degree curriculum which require a balance of teaching technical subjects and soft skills. Most of the construction management degree programs offered by the higher education institutions in Malaysia is now operating on the soft skills outlined in the OBE curriculum but critics continue to argue that the graduate are still short of the soft skills required. In conceiving this problem a research was mooted to examine the vexing issues of soft skil- s outlined in the OBE curriculum design and delivery. This paper presents the first part of the research study which investigates the issues of ambiguity of soft skills in construction management OBE curriculum. Data were drawn from a survey that was carried out on construction management lecturers from three public universities. This finding provided some significant insights which suggest elements of the soft skills outlined in the OBE curriculum which needs to be re-learnt. This would help to identify and remove the ambiguities in conceiving how soft skills should be taught and assessed.