Relevance of Outcome Based Education in the Advancement of Educational Quality

 High quality education has become the basic need for this generation to survive, says iCloudEMS. Life is running with a frenetic pace and thus, adoption of new technology is the gateway to the bright future. High quality education aims at creating an effective teaching and learning environment that may bring about desired changes in the learners by equipping them with in-depth knowledge, sharpened skills and positive attributes. Educational institutes are implementing the model of Outcome-Based Education with the help of innovative technologies which provide managed services to ERP like iCloudEMS and impart wisdom, skills and values to the students to reach the acme of success.

Outcome – Based Education sets a new standard for learning which emphasises on outcomes or results more than accumulation of credits. The teachers are required to design some action plans or course outcomes for the students which they have to attain while acquiring the knowledge. After taking the exams in the form of tests, assignments, practicals and projects, students get evaluated and their results are mapped with the set course outcomes and in turn with program outcomes. Their results showcase their achievements and accomplishments in a specific course. The induction of India in the Washington Accord in 2014 with the permanent signatory status) is considered as a big step forward for the betterment of the higher education system in India. It means that an Indian graduate degree with NBA accreditation is valid in any one of the other countries who have signed the accord and so for Indian educational institutions, it has become compulsory to follow Outcome Based Education (OBE) model in order to get accredited and approved. 

The Outcome-Based Education model evaluates the growth or progress of the graduate on three important parameters as follows:

• Program Educational Objectives (PEO)
• Program Outcomes (PO)
• Course Outcomes (CO)
  

Program Educational Objectives (PEO) are extensive statements that describe the career and professional achievements which the program is targeting the students to accomplish. Similarly, Program Outcomes (POs) are the statements that describe what students are supposed to know and acquire while doing the graduation. They must reflect upon or meditate on Graduate attributes as described by the accrediting body for the ungraduated programs. Course Outcomes are the parameters on the basis of which students’ performance is evaluated for each course undertaken by them in every semester. 

Features of Outcome – Based Education System

• Student Centric: OBE provides a platform to the learners as per their ability as according to it every learner has varying capacity and grasping power.
  
• Clarity & Focus: Students and teachers work in one direction to achieve the targeted goals by mapping course outcomes and program outcomes.
  
• Creates Opportunities: Students get several chances to achieve the desired results. Their marks are purely measured on the outcomes. 
  
• Complete involvement: This is the compulsory and integral part of OBE as students are required to learn in order to develop understanding of the subjects and acquire the necessary skills. 
  

Traditional Educational System v/s Outcome-Based Education System 

The traditional or conventional education system has always been described as teacher-oriented, repeated curriculum oriented but most of the time the information is shared in only one direction which is teacher to student direction but in today’s scenario, it is not enough as it lacks many other multidimensional connections. This Conventional Education System has so many limitations like:

• This traditional classroom teaching lacks in promoting critical thinking skills and focuses on notes-based learning or memorizing the content. 
• Students become passive learners rather than active learners.
• The syllabus is followed only for the sake of completion and not for the outcomes.
• The students cannot learn innovative things and their knowledge is limited to the experience provided by the teachers. 
  

While on the other hand, Outcome – Based Education system offers so many benefits like:

• The designed modules are creative and flexible.
• They have a more problem-solving approach.
• Students’ interpersonal skills can be improved gradually.
• Students can adjust themselves with new technologies easily.
• OBE is devoted to the spontaneous learning process.
• It enhances and strengthens the decision making and management process of the institute. 
  

Challenges faced by the Institutions in the implementation of OBE:

Outcome-Based Education has made its appearance as a threat to the conventional method of teaching and learning. It targets to enhance the competency and it can grow with the help of educators who possess progressive and flexible mind-set. Institutions are adopting, planning and executing OBE but when it comes to the management of overall activities and data manually, there can be following challenges:

• Data collection & storage along with curriculum management may become a herculean task. 
• Maintenance of assessment cycle to achieve the desired goals is tough as well because it abides by the steps mentioned below: –
  

Step 1: Designing of assessment considering goals, outcomes, criteria, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and other standards like rubrics. 

Step 2: Sharing of outcomes, criteria and standards to keep things transparent. 

Step 3: Providing learning experiences through curriculum & teaching pedagogy.

Step 4: Collecting, Evaluating and Analysing the results of students’ learning.

Step 5: Interpreting the results to find the relevant gaps for the revision of teaching methodologies, curriculum, programs & outcomes. 

• Manual evaluations of the attainment of outcomes often come out to be erroneous which may affect the further processes like revision of the curriculum to fill the gaps, restructuring of COs in order to map with the POs. 
• The outcome mapping by analysing the overall attainment consumes a huge amount of energy and effort. 
  

Relevance of Outcome-Based Education System 

OBE is a crucial part of the education system in the era of globalization. It offers a cluster of skills which are required to deal with rapidly changing technologies. The result of the OBE produces transparent anticipation of the top-level product as students understand their own expectations and teachers also observe students’ understanding level and provide resources based on their analysis. OBE doesn’t suggest any specific teaching technique as educators aren’t bound to follow old conventional teaching methodologies. They can plan numerous activities for the assessment of the students and grade them on the basis of their understanding. Institutes are turning towards effective online examination which can be a reliable platform for authentic result generation which assures live proctoring and all. 

The structure of OBE encompasses creating, managing and aligning sets of competencies to learning resources, assessments & evaluations, analytical rubrics etc. to keep an eye on the performance. By associating with the unified hi-tech education management system, institutions can empower themselves by:

• Developing effective sets of course outcomes and storing them for the implementation.
• Reorienting curricular design by focusing on learning outcomes first rather than scheduling of time-structures.
• Managing high quality of learning resources, shareable contents, assignments, projects and other rubrics to assess the learning outcomes. 
• Assuring authentic examination procedures, errorless and transparent grade generation. 
• Maintaining the direct assessment & indirect assessment system and satisfying the four most important stakeholders i.e. Teachers, Students, Administration & Parents. 
  

To conclude, it can be said that the adoption of OBE by educational institutes is considered to be a great step forward for the achievement of excellence and ensures effective result outcomes so that quality of education can be maintained. 

Source from: https://www.icloudems.com/relevance-of-outcome-based-education-in-the-advancement-of-educational-quality/