What is Outcome-based education?

Outcome-based education is a model of education that rejects the traditional focus on what
the school provides to students, in favor of making students demonstrate that they "know and are
able to do" whatever the required outcomes are.

OBE reforms emphasize setting clear standards for observable, measurable outcomes.
Nothing about OBE demands the adoption of any specific outcome. For example, many countries
write their OBE standards so that they focus strictly on mathematics, language, science, and history,
without ever referring to attitudes, social skills, or moral values.

The key features which may be used to judge if a system has implemented an outcomes-
based education systems are:

 Creation of a curriculum framework that outlines specific, measurable outcomes. The

standards included in the frameworks are usually chosen through the area's normal political
process.
 A commitment not only to provide an opportunity of education, but to require learning
outcomes for advancement. Promotion to the next grade, a diploma, or other reward is
granted upon achievement of the standards, while extra classes, repeating the year, or other
consequences entail upon those who do not meet the standards.
 Standards-based assessments that determines whether students have achieved the stated
standard. Assessments may take any form, so long as the assessments actually measure
whether the student knows the required information or can perform the required task.
 A commitment that all students of all groups will ultimately reach the same minimum
standards. Schools may not "give up" on unsuccessful students.

Outcomes

The emphasis in an OBE education system is on measured outcomes rather than "inputs,"
such as how many hours students spend in class, or what textbooks are provided. Outcomes may
include a range of skills and knowledge. Generally, outcomes are expected to be concretely
measurable, that is, "Student can run 50 meters in less than one minute" instead of "Student enjoys
physical education class." A complete system of outcomes for a subject area normally includes
everything from mere recitation of fact ("Students will name three tragedies written by
Shakespeare") to complex analysis and interpretation ("Student will analyze the social context of a
Shakespearean tragedy in an essay"). Writing appropriate and measurable outcomes can be very
difficult, and the choice of specific outcomes is often a source of local controversies.

Each educational agency is responsible for setting its own outcomes. Under the OBE model,
education agencies may specify any outcome (skills and knowledge), but not inputs (field trips,
arrangement of the school day, teaching styles). Some popular models of outcomes include the
National Science Education Standards and the NCTM's Principles and Standards for School
Mathematics.

Approaches to grading, reporting, and promoting

An important by-product of this approach is that students are assessed against external,
absolute objectives, instead of reporting the students' relative achievements. The traditional model
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of grading on a curve (top student gets the best grade, worst student always fails (even if they know
all the material), everyone else is evenly distributed in the middle) is never accepted in OBE or
standards-based education. Instead, a student's performance is related in absolute terms: "Jane
knows how to write the letters of the alphabet" or "Jane answered 80% of questions correctly"
instead of "Jane answered more questions correctly than Mary."

Under OBE, teachers can use any objective grading system they choose, including letter
grades. In fact, many schools adopt OBE methods and use the same grading systems that they have
always used. However, for the purposes of graduation, advancement, and retention, a fully
developed OBE system generally tracks and reports not just a single overall grade for a subject, but
also give information about several specific outcomes within that subject. For example, rather than
just getting a passing grade for mathematics, a student might be assessed as level 4 for number
sense, level 5 for algebraic concepts, level 3 for measurement skills, etc. This approach is valuable to
schools and parents by specifically identifying a student's strengths and weaknesses.

In one alternate grading approach, a student is awarded "levels" instead of letter grades.
From Kindergarten to year 12, the student will receive either a Foundational level (which is pre-
institutional) or be evidenced at levels 1 through to 8. In the simplest implementation, earning a
"level" indicates that the teacher believes that a student has learned enough of the current material
to be able to succeed in the next level of work. A student technically cannot flunk in this system: a
student who needs to review the current material will simply not achieve the next level at the same
time as most of his same-age peers. This acknowledges differential growth at different stages, and
focuses the teacher on the individual needs of the students.

In this approach, students and their parents are better able to track progress from year to
year, since the levels are based on criteria that remain constant for a student's whole time at school.
However, this experience is perceived by some as a flaw in the system: While it is entirely normal
for some students to work on the same level of outcomes for more than one year parents and
students have been socialized into the expectation of a constant, steady progress through
schoolwork. Parents and students therefore interpret the normal experience as failure.

This emphasis on recognizing positive achievements, and comparing the student to his own
prior performance, has been accused by some of "dumbing down" education (and by others as
making school much too hard), since it recognizes achievement at different levels. Even those who
would not achieve a passing grade in a traditional age-based approach can be recognized for their
concrete, positive, individual improvements.

OBE-oriented teachers think about the individual needs of each student and give
opportunities for each student to achieve at a variety of levels. Thus, in theory, weaker students are
given work within their grasp and exceptionally strong students are extended. In practice,
managing independent study programs for thirty or more individuals is difficult. Adjusting to
students' abilities is something that good teachers have always done: OBE simply makes the
approach explicit and reflects the approach in marking and reporting.

Differences with traditional education methods

In a traditional education system and economy, students are given grades and rankings
compared to each other. Content and performance expectations are based primarily on what was
taught in the past to students of a given age. The basic goal of traditional education was to present
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the knowledge and skills of the old generation to the new generation of students, and to provide
students with an environment in which to learn, with little attention (beyond the classroom
teacher) to whether or not any student ever learns any of the material. It was enough that the
school presented an opportunity to learn. Actual achievement was neither measured nor required
by the school system.

In fact, under the traditional model, student performance is expected to show a wide range
of abilities. The failure of some students is accepted as a natural and unavoidable circumstance. The
highest-performing students are given the highest grades and test scores, and the lowest
performing students are given low grades. (Local laws and traditions determine whether the lowest
performing students were socially promoted or made to repeat the year.) Schools used norm-
referenced tests, such as inexpensive, multiple-choice computer-scored questions with single
correct answers, to quickly rank students on ability. These tests do not give criterion-based
judgments as to whether students have met a single standard of what every student is expected to
know and do: they merely rank the students in comparison with each other. In this system, grade-
level expectations are defined as the performance of the median student, a level at which half the
students score better and half the students score worse. By this definition, in a normal population,
half of students are expected to perform above grade level and half the students below grade level,
no matter how much or how little the students have learned.

Reference: https://www.k12academics.com/education-reform/outcome-based-education/what-
obe

Outcome-based Education: An Outline

Rao, N. J. (2020). Outcome-based Education: An Outline. Higher Education for the Future,
234763111988641. doi:10.1177/2347631119886418
10.1177/2347631119886418

Things we can do because of learning are called outcomes of learning. Outcome based
education (OBE) was propounded by William Spady in the 90s to bring the focus of formal
education to what the students learn rather than what they were taught. OBE is a system of
education giving priority to ends, purpose, accomplishments, and results. All decisions about the
curriculum, assessment, and instruction are driven by the exit learning outcomes the students
should display at the end of a program or a course. This paper presents a method of writing
outcomes for General higher education programs. Outcomes for a higher education program are
defined at three levels as program outcomes (POs), program specific outcomes (PSOs), and course
outcomes (COs). The most important aspect of an outcome is that it should be observable and
measurable. These are best written in a well-defined framework of taxonomy of learning. Bloom’s
taxonomy of learning identifies three domains of learning: Cognitive, affective and psychomotor.
Revised Bloom taxonomy of cognitive domain has two dimensions cognitive levels and knowledge
categories. It is proposed that CO statements be written within a well-defined structure: Action,
knowledge elements, conditions, and criteria. Tagging COs with POs, PSOs, cognitive levels and the
number of classroom hours associated facilitates the computation of attainment of COs, POs, and
PSOs.