

Prashant Pundir
Outcome-Based Education
There is a glaring need, as clear as daylight, to upgrade and transform the traditional education system. A traditional education system is just a predefined approach accepted by various cultures and communities across the world. This type of system is highly dependent on the theoretical aspects of learning. It confines the potential of students with its incessant way of the teaching-learning process, which focuses on the memorizing skills of students rather than allowing them to thrive on their skill-growth development. There are limited opportunities for children to develop new skills, which may be beneficial for the future-forward market. In the traditional education system, teachers are more inclined to finish a curriculum within a given timeframe, while hardly underlining the importance of innovation.
On the contrary, Outcome-Based Education or OBE system is a prominent education system now being adopted widely by various institutions throughout the globe. A large number of educators and educational bodies are very interested in digging out the underlying reasons behind the ongoing learning transformation. The outcome-based education system goes up a notch higher and helps institutions in measuring their learning outcomes. It also prepares children to stand neck-to-neck with their global counterparts by enabling students to develop new skills. These factors raise the education standard altogether and allow institutions to obtain authorization from esteemed accreditation bodies, such as the NBA (National Board of Accreditation), by constantly improving in the long run.
What is Outcome-based Education?
Outcome-Based Education is a student-centered instruction model that primarily focuses on measuring student performance through outcome. It begins with a direct provision of what students are to know, what they are to be able to do, and what attitudes or values they should be able to demonstrate. The outcome-based approach calls for a systematic process to be followed. The focus always revolves around the trainee, and them successfully acquiring a well-defined outcome. Here, you start with a planning or analytical phase. What exactly does the trainee need to learn? What are the skills required to obtain the outcome? What knowledge and attitude must the trainee possess? What experience do they already have? When all of these details are perfectly established in alignment with the educational bodies developing the material, the learning outcomes can be written.
What are the Reasons for Implementing Outcome-based Education?
Let’s discuss further in detail as to why outcome-based education is the need of the hour. In the age of globalization, where everything is changing at a rapid pace, it is important to stay relevant in context to the demands of the society. With technology’s massive upsurge, more and more skills are needed to thrive as an individual. Academic organizations must follow the requirement of generating graduates to deal with technological developments. Therefore, the transition from the traditional education system to results-based education system has become an absolute necessity. However, the question remains, how is the outcome-based education beneficial with its learner-centric approach? Let’s highlight some important elements of outcome-based education.
- Transparency
Clarity is a very crucial trait for teachers as well as students. It is extremely important to have a direct approach with clarity in each category and all levels. Outcome-based education formulates a transparent expectation of the results. For learners to be able to advance, they need to understand what they expect, and teachers can also understand the things they want to demonstrate throughout the course.
- Flexibility
The outcome-based approach is not dependent on a stagnant instructional methodology. Teachers are provided with the freedom to experiment and use any suitable methodology to bring out the best results. Teachers can constitute their classes per the wishes of the students, reading transparently what needs to be done. Since outcome-based education is a student-centered ideology, teachers are also able to acknowledge the diversity with various assessment techniques. Study guides, cluster work and seminars are some of the concepts instructors facilitate to the students to grasp and learn.
- Analysis
With outcome-based education, instructors are constantly analyzing the accomplishments of a student and also highlighting the area of concerns to provide individual assistance. This helps both the institution as well as the students. It also helps teachers to assess the evolution and growth of the student over a certain quantity and to help them achieve desired results.
- Participation
The participation of students is an important element of outcome-based education. This type of learning involves systemic growth as well as individual growth. Students take responsibility for their learning and make attempts to fully understand the fabric. They do not look to blame their failures upon someone else, eventually allowing themselves to study fair and square and learn inherently.