What is Outcome-Based Education? OBE vs Traditional Education System

Outcome Based Education
Rising need to upgrade the traditional education system

In the traditional system of education, the teachers and students spend a lot of time trying to learn the syllabus of every subject. The main aim of the course and curriculum has been to score good marks in the examination. The students weren’t skilled or knowledgeable enough by the end of the semester due to this method.

Further, this increased the problem of unemployment in the country as many students were not skilled enough to match the requirements of candidates in the companies. The gap between industry requirements and curriculum gave rise to unemployable students.

Benefits of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) for Students

At present, Outcome Based Education or the OBE System is being widely used by leading institutions across the world. Many of the educators have developed a curiosity to understand the reason behind the ongoing learning transformation. Well, the reason is simple!

Outcome based education is an educational methodology where each aspect of education is organized around a set of goals (outcomes). Students should achieve their goal by the end of the educational process. Throughout the educational experience, all students should be able to achieve their goals. It focuses on measuring student performance through outcomes. The OBE maps & measures students’ performance at every step. The OBE model aims to maximize student learning outcomes by developing their knowledge & skills.

The outcome based education system also referred to as standard based education, has proven to be a success in helping institutions measure their learning outcomes and at the same time enabling students to develop new skills that prepare them to stand out with their global counterparts.

These factors can contribute to raising the education standard and aid institutions to acquire accreditation from esteemed accreditation bodies such as the (National Board of Accreditation) NBA Accreditation by improving continuously in the long run.

On the contrary, when we speak of the traditional education system, it is highly dependent on theoretical aspects of learning. It repeats the humdrum way of teaching-learning process that just focuses on memorizing skills of students rather than skill development.

It hardly provides any chance for students to develop new skills which might be useful for building their careers. In a traditional system, teachers are more focused on completing the curriculum with the given time frame rather than innovating!

Let us discuss in detail how OBE differs from the traditional education system and understand what it has to offer to the institutions. Here are the features that depict what is OBE & its significance in modern educational setup...

Outcome Based Education System VS Traditional Education System

Outlining & Designing the Curriculum

The basic aim of the traditional education system is to pass on the knowledge of the previous generation to the upcoming generation of students.

‘Remodeling’ & ‘Restructuring’ the norms is nowhere the prime goal in the traditional environment.

Even the most experienced staff members are concerned only about teaching the curriculum and don’t have the enthusiasm to stretch their lessons beyond the classroom. They just want students to learn & mug up things being taught.

To be honest, the curriculum plays a pivotal role in providing deeper insights regarding different subjects to the students. The more practicality is included, the more students will develop essential skills that’ll guarantee a career worth pursuing.

OBE system provides expanded opportunities for the kids by following a student-centered learning approach. It has a clear goal to impact their lives positively committing to excellence & innovation. The curriculum is designed in such a way that the output to be achieved by the end of the session is decided in the first place. Teachers & K12 faculty need to give inputs that may include various innovative activities that would succor students to reach the desired target. Teachers need to decide what skills are required to master a particular subject, and then, they design the curriculum keeping the same in mind.

Grading System

I agree that grades don’t decide a students’ future but I can’t certainly overlook the role it plays in shaping one’s career!

Grades are important. Period.

However, unlike the traditional grading system, the OBE education system doesn’t provide grades to students ranking from ‘best’ to ‘worst’.

For instance, in the traditional model, if students scoring a high range of scores are given an ‘A’ grade and students with low grades or poor performances are given ‘C’, then there’s no clarity of thoughts.

These grades don’t give exact numbers and even if numbers are given, then there's no emphasis on whether the students have learned new skills.

Grading is solely based on their bookish knowledge.

Under OBE, the scenario is different. OBE system focuses on what the students have learned.

To quote an example, it says that a particular student, let’s consider the name is Jenny – “Jenny knows Pythagoras theorem” or “Jenny has answered 90% of the questions related to Pythagoras theorem correctly” instead of “Jenny has scored more than a few students of the same batch” or “Jenny has answered the majority of the questions correctly.”

In OBE, another approach that measures results in terms of different “levels” can also be applied. For example, teachers can decide various levels based on the units of the curriculum.

Level-1 indicates algebraic concepts.

Level -2 indicates – skills-related concepts, and so on.

Students clearing assessments or tests of a particular unit may be assigned a “level”.

This level wise student progress mapping will help teachers to identify their academic weaknesses as well as strengths with ease.

Scalability of Final Outcomes

The traditional model of education doesn’t permit institutions to identify which factors played the role of catalyst in helping them improve.

Teachers may guess that due to the implementation of certain aspects such as conducting guest lecturers has helped them improve a lot. For example, if the institution has 100 students that have passed the exam in the current year, and last year the number was 70 then, they may compare the results, and conclude that the ratio of students passing the exams has increased may be due to conducting guest lectures.

However, with the implementation of the OBE system software, every student’s progress can be tracked based on their performance and differential growth at various stages or levels which also adheres to the education standard set by National Education Policy NEP 2020. With the mapping of PO-CO, best-suited assessments, question-wise outcome calculation, teachers can even be sure of factors that have helped them improve based on the final outcome sheet. The OBE software also enables them to generate reports related to CO-PO, students yearly attainments, Student-wise attainment, and course level attainment, etc. with CO-PO mapping software free from errors.

Such a teaching-learning process accelerates the chances of gaining certification from the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) & opening the doors of quality education for students.