Outcome-based assessment in India: A method for quantifying course outcome attainment

Abstract

The National Board of Accreditation (NBA), India was established by the AICTE (All India Council of Technical Education) to assess the qualitative competence of the programs offered by engineering institutions. NBA focuses on outcome-based education (OBE). The main principles of OBE are to provide concluding significant outcomes, to expand the opportunities for success, to set high expectations to succeed. Each course is defined with a set of course outcomes. One of the key aspects of OBE is the attainment of course outcomes (CO). At the end of each course, the CO needs to be calculated and evaluated, to verify whether outcome expected has been attained or not. The attainment of the CO proves the efficiency of the teaching and learning process of the course. The course outcome attainment enables the faculties to plan and develop appropriate tools, materials and methodologies to improve the teaching learning process as well as to provide a measure for quality assurance. This paper shows the method to quantify the course outcomes with their target level. Assessment methods and tools are used to identify, collect and prepare data to evaluate the attainment of CO. This method can be applicable to all engineering programs in the line of accrediting their program to the NBA.