Outcome-Based Education: An Open Framework

Abstract

Outcome-based education (OBE) has been the effective framework of teaching, learning and evaluation for the UGC and NAAC for the past five years. Nevertheless, most universities in the country are yet to design their academic programmes and curricula. In this context, we have taken OBE as the central theme for the journal’s current issue. Four articles directly relate to OBE’s general and particular aspects. N. J. Rao’s article comprehensively deals with the theory and practice of OBE. Other articles by Manulal P. R. and Shefeeque V. draw on discipline-specific issues and effects of OBE.

Outcome-based Approach

Our higher education’s poor quality is so entrenched an allegation that we hesitate to question. Who decides the criteria of quality is a question the country’s heritage institutions of quality higher education should ask. In fact, learning is a curiosity-driven, self-directed personal enterprise, a natural process that precludes quality crisis. It is an ecosystem of teachers teaching how to learn and students deepening their learning through self-conscious unlearning. Needless to mention that such an ideal set-up cannot exist in higher education that scales up as an enterprise en masse at the expense of quality. This predicament accounts for the insistence upon frameworks or templates ensuring mandatory minimum standards and quality in higher education.

As part of quality assurance, it is essential to substitute teaching how to remember with teaching how to learn deeply through systematic unlearning. It is in this context, both the UGC and NAAC have come forward to insist upon OBE based on the Bloom–Anderson taxonomy of learning as an effective method of curricular design for quality teaching and learning (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001; Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956). It integrates every aspect of the educational system with learning outcomes (LOs) that every student should attain on the successful completion of the academic programme concerned (Hager & Holland, 2006). OBE curriculum demands determination of LOs before teaching, and it insists upon introducing a running thread of control across the course content, instructional strategies, learning experiences and methods of evaluation. In short, OBE is relevant to a formal teaching–learning system that lacks clarity of purpose, goals and hence quality (Blanco Ramírez, 2013; Oliver, 2013).

A great advantage of OBE is that the worthiness or desirability of the whole course can be pre-judged before its implementation by the defensibility of its objectives, viz. the outcomes, and how they can be achieved through the several steps contained in the process (Hager, 2006; Green, et al., 2009). Precisely drawn-specific outcomes provide clarity of purpose in teaching/learning (Bond et al., 2017). OBE is out-and-out learner-centric, in the sense that it helps learners conduct concurrent self-assessment for knowing their progress in attaining the postulated outcome. In case of difficulties in reaching the intended level in learning, the scheme empowers the learners to demand learning experiences appropriate for resolution. Teachers in turn ascertain the effectiveness of their teaching and make sure that they legitimately enjoy the right to administer tests for assessing the learners’ capability in the attainment of the outcome.

Nevertheless, what combination of forces would be instrumental in determining the outcomes is crucial. It is extremely important that the teachers concerned determine the outcomes, and the students are counselled about them. Arbitrary imposition of outcomes from above through a top-heavy system would not help, because it goes mechanical and rigid like what the dominant economy does by fixing the deliverables in its project outcomes. Fool proof internal features appropriate to make the system democratic, student-centric and innovative would be inevitable to resist the move towards homogenization of outcomes and their unilateral imposition.

Learning Outcomes

LOs are what the educated can perform as a result of education. In fact, higher education is predominantly a self-driven process of awareness, and the teacher only facilitates it (Marton & Booth, 1997). Such a natural learner ecosystem hardly exists in higher education that is a large-scale institutionalized enterprise necessitating standardization. Indian universities have been lagging behind in following the practice of identifying the LOs.

LOs are conceived at the micro level as course outcomes (COs). COs are linked to them. Most courses are expected to inculcate issue-centric learning proficiency against the background of disciplinary convergence, develop capability to resolve issues, instil criticality and nurture innovative faculty to create new knowledge. All courses in science and technology are expected to instil laboratory/workshop skill in handling advanced instrumentation and expertise in computer-simulated experiments.

At the macro level, it is programme-specific outcomes (PSOs) that constitute the domain-specific outcomes—outcomes in science, technology, social science, humanities and liberal arts. Abstracted from PSOs in terms of actual measurable general attributes as salient imprints that the programme incises on the graduates constitute programme outcomes (POs) or graduate attributes (GAs). The following can be cited as examples of POs/GAs: (a) Competency in doing theoretical research based on computer automation and high power computing, (b) mathematical computational skill, (c) acquisition of a science-tech knowledge base, (d) experimental innovativeness in micro-engineering research, (e) acquisition of a holistic perspective of disciplines, (f) critical insights into them and (g) nurturing innovativeness (Barrie, 2004; Bauret, 2006).

It is mandatory for any university following OBE to declare its academic POs, generally called GAs. They are what a university guarantees for its graduates by way of competencies/skills (Barrie, 2006; Jones, 2012). GAs signify what a graduate is competent to perform. They are extracted out of COs and PSOs. Universally relevant outcomes or attributes of higher education are a clear understanding of the fundamentals of the discipline chosen for graduation, scientific outlook, analytical faculty, communicative skill, general knowledge about world affairs, specific knowledge about national affairs, environmental awareness, critical knowledge about limitations of development and responsible citizenship (Radhakrishnan, 1949).

Outcome-based Teaching and Evaluation

Outcome-based teaching and evaluation (OBTE) demands training in how to facilitate outcome conscious learning and ensure the attainment of intended learning outcomes (ILOs). Since its essential pre-requisite is the determination of the LOs of courses and programmes, we have to provide the chairpersons of university boards of studies the necessary training in outcome writing. Outcome determination being a knowledge-based creative exercise with flexibility and choice, each university has the exercise freedom to determine the outcomes of its courses and programmes insightfully and far-sightedly (Kalfa & Taksa, 2015). Universities have to ensure that the determined outcomes and curricular content are appropriately linked to each other.

A crucial component of OBTE is training in assessment methods framed in alignment with the ILOs. Criterion-referenced assessment (CRA) is the method widely applied in evaluating (and grading) students all over the world. Once the CRA is well framed, teaching is well aligned with it and assessment of students’ ILO achievements are entrenched, quality assurance of OBE is ensured. Universities in the country have to be ready with ILO-oriented courses, programmes, curricula and teaching and CRA-based assessment to benefit all students and teachers with higher quality education.

It is globally approved today that higher education institutions follow a well-thought out teaching/learning system consisting of curriculum, course, instruction and test designs of global standards (Trowler, 2008). In this context, higher education institutions of teaching and research have to rearticulate their curricula in alignment with the requirements of OBE.

Rajan Gurukkal

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