In traditional education system the students have been molded right from their childhood with “Perform or Perish”. Today we teach the students to “get only marks” rather motivating them for lifelong learning of knowledge and skills. Traditional education system concerns what contents should be taught and assesses how well students have received knowledge while outcome based education (OBE) is a students centered system which concerns what the students will know and be able to do called integrated learning outcomes (ILOs) after teaching and assesses how well students have achieved the ILOs. In traditional system, graduates are not completely prepared for the workforce with lack of emphasis on soft skills needed in jobs e.g. communication skills, interpersonal skills, analytical skills, working attitude etc. OBE lies not in what we teach but “what students learn”. OBE emphasizes on the student learning by; utilizing student learning outcomes to make explicit what a student is expected to be able to know, comprehend or do, providing learning positive activities that would help students to attain those course learning outcomes and assessing the extent to which the student meets these outcomes through the use of explicit assessment criteria.OBE is focused on students achieving outcomes in cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains especially acquiring the skills of 21st century like Critical/ Creative Thinking, Decision-Making, Problem Solving, Interpersonal Relationship, Effective (Verbal & Written) Communication, Coping with Emotions, Stress, Self-Awareness and Lifelong Learning.
In recent years, professional preparation of engineers at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels has undergone significant changes due to a variety of factors including knowledge explosion, new tools and techniques of teaching
Washington accord is an international accreditation covenant for the undergraduate engineering programs under OBE system. Washington accord was established in 1989 and the initial signatories were Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States, United Kingdom and Ireland. WA, with the goal “Working Together to Advance Benchmarking and Mobility of the Students”, recognizes that there is significant equivalency of the engineering programs accredited by those signatories and that the graduates of accredited programs in any of the signatory countries are acknowledged by the other signatory countries as having met the academic requirements for entry in to the practice of engineering. WA formulated 12 ideal traits known as “Graduate Attributes” the engineering graduates must earn at the end of their graduation. Graduation from aWA-accredited program is passport for engineer’s mobility across good number of advanced nations and emerging economies. Pakistan Engineering council (PEC) started efforts to implement OBE under WA in engineering programs at engineering institutions of Pakistan in 2007 and achieved the Provisional Signatory status of Washington Accord of International Engineering Alliance (IEA) in 2010.PEC became full signatory to Washington Accord in 2017 among its twenty signatories. In recent years, professional preparation of engineers at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels has undergone significant changes due to a variety of factors including knowledge explosion, new tools and techniques of teaching. A key new element has been interdisciplinary redesign of engineering programs by PEC where teams of scholars from different disciplines of knowledge design and implement programs. Starting from 2007, PEC has conducted series of training workshops for engineering faculty to train them to implement the OBE in engineering programs. PEC serves to facilitate Engineering Institutions to meet the minimum standard stipulated for the accreditation of their existing engineering programs or newly proposed programs. From 2016 and onward, all institutes of higher education (IHEs) offering engineering programs are required to implement OBE in order to get PEC Accreditation. Currently, 53 IHEs are being accredited for different engineering disciplines under OBE system (level 2) for one or two years, while maximum allowable accreditation for level 2 is 5 years.
The outcome based assessment (OBA) emphasizes on elements of program learning outcomes required in the engineering curriculum and to adopt Continual Quality Improvement (CQI) procedures covering OBE. PEC has a pool of senior academic experts called “Program Evaluators (PEVs) responsible to evaluate the respective programs at engineering institutions during accreditation visit. PEC has also conducted number of training workshops for capacity building of PEVs with the help of nominated experts (WA-Mentors) by Washington Accord. Beside the continuous efforts made by PEC, the concept of OBE/OBA is still ambiguous to the stakeholders. There is a strong feeling among the engineering faculty across the country that all PEVs have their own explanations towards different elements of OBE which hinders them to device the effective OBE system at their respective departments. There is a dire need for PEVs to adopt similar concept/understanding regarding each element of OBE while evaluating a program. PEC needs to develop a uniform Evaluation Manual for PEVs similar to Accreditation Manual (2014; V1.1). PEVs need to become on one page regarding evaluation standards/OBE-concepts so as the confusions on OBE can be rectified. Complex engineering problem solving and project oriented problem based learning are the two major concepts of OBE system which are most ambiguous to the engineering faculty across the country and need more extensive training sessions both for faculty and PEVs in order to facilitate engineering institutions to adopt CQI of WA graduate attributes covering the OBE procedures in true letter and spirit.
The writer is Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering