Developing a Software Package for Outcome Based Education

Abstract

In the present global scenario, competitiveness in the industry has increased tremendously and so has the expectations from the industry towards the upcoming skilled graduates. To cope up with rising industry standards and expectations, institutes across the world try different ways to improve the quality of technical education. Outcome Based Education (OBE), which propagates that an educational system must meet a set number of outcomes. It has been well accepted globally to improve the academic standards. The National Board of Accreditation (NBA), India, has laid down a set of guidelines for each program that have to be followed for the program to gain the accreditation grade. The institute must thus formulate a set of Course Outcomes and Program Outcomes for each course and program respectively. Till date the assessment criteria of most institutions to evaluate attainment of these outcomes has been limited to certain direct and indirect assessment tools or factors. But there are further assessment factors that have to be considered for a clear depiction of the attainment of outcomes. Integrating the Bloom's Taxonomy level, considering the correlation levels between each CO and PO and number of credits for each course are the factors discussed here under direct assessment, while MOOCs, internships, course end surveys, industrial visits, patents, research work and mini projects are some of the factors discussed under indirect assessment. Thus, it ensures that the attainment levels of POs reflect a true picture on the skills developed by a technical skilled graduate.