What is Outcome-Based Education?
Outcome-based education is a learning system focused and organized around instructional efforts that ensure clearly defined outcomes from students who pass out. It is a transformational process that shifts the focus of education from teaching to learning and from instructive methods to a demonstration-driven process. It is essentially based on a learner-centered approach, driven by project-based learning techniques.
The system moves away from metrics such as grades, percentages, and averages. Instead, student performances are defined by a mixture of knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes, and the understanding they achieve through their engagement with a particular set of educational experiences.
The outcome-based system works through four stages of development-
- Identifying what a particular student will learn according to demonstrated aptitude
- Measuring the student’s progress based on demonstrated achievement
- Providing the student with multiple instructional and assessment strategies
- And devoting adequate time and assistance to maximize the potential of each student
The meaning of outcome based education is based on the fact that all students can learn and succeed, but not simultaneously in the same ways. The system believes that success breeds success and therefore emphasizes authentic, achievable, and assessable learning outcomes. Primarily concerned with end capabilities, the plan centers its curriculum and assessment design around higher-order exit outcomes and remains accountable to stakeholders, the learners, the teachers, the employers, and the public.
The operating principles of outcome-based learning
- All activities are focused on demonstrable learning.
- Expanded opportunities offer students several ways to learn and demonstrate a particular outcome.
- The system aims to deliver equitable achievements, and the goal is to ensure all students achieve the highest level of outcome instead of the traditional rank-based result.
- The system adheres to a design-down approach. Thus, it allows for a curriculum that is designed with the desired result in mind.
The essence of an outcome-based learning process
It is based on the principle that what matters ultimately is not what is taught but what is learned. Therefore, all teaching is set to an appropriate course based on intended learning outcomes instead of teaching objectives. What is being taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed are all perfectly aligned. The intended learning outcomes are entirely consistent with each other. The quality of teaching is judged by the quality of learning that takes place.
The need for Outcome-Based Education
Forced to compete in a global economy that is highly technological, a country requires a workforce that can continually solve problems and is committed to ongoing learning processes in line with new technological developments. In addition, the workforce must demonstrate above-average communication skills and be highly flexible.
How an Outcome-Based Education system helps
The system instills intellectual rigor based on all academic activities, including professional critical judgment. In addition, it teaches an ability to arrive at creative responses to intellectual, professional, and social challenges, imbibing in students a commitment to sustainability and high ethical standards in social and professional practices.
By initiating a lifelong learning process, students can be responsive to change by being reflective and through self-managed learning mechanisms. In addition, it seeds the skills to communicate and collaborate among individuals, and within teams, in both professional and social settings. More crucially, it fosters an ability to engage with diverse cultural and Indigenous perspectives in both global and local environments.
OBE offers students the resources to choose what they want to study and how to study it. The system adapts itself to a learner’s strengths and weaknesses and ensures adequate time for each student to achieve a high degree of proficiency and fluency in the subject matter. All institutions are benchmarked and are comparable to one another based on accreditation.
The Outcome-Based Education system ensures that all stakeholders benefit from its framework.
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