How Outcome-based learning can advance the knowledge and skill in youth

Outcome-based education (OBE) is a visionary objective to bring reform in higher education for the upskilling of students according to the demands of 21^st century society. Our traditional education system is more focused on rote learning and less emphasis is given to improve the skills of students including communication skills, interpersonal skills, analytical skills, working attitude etc. that enable them to meet the global demands of the 21st century.  OBE is a student-centric education paradigm that measures the students’ progress in terms of predefined outcomes so as to attain knowledge, skills and attitude to compete with their global counterparts. 

Implementation of OBE framework

In the world of multidisciplinary and flexible learning, it is essential to encourage the effective implementation of Outcome based education models in Colleges and Universities. To implement the OBE model, the first step is to outline a set of learning outcomes and once the outcomes are structured, all the imperative components and activities of learners are framed in line with the desired outcomes and the learners are encouraged to demonstrate the outcomes to gauge their learning achievements.

OBE framework consists of following components:

• Vision and Mission
• PEOs
• POs
• COs
  

Program Educational Objectives (PEOs): Program Educational Objectives (PEO) are predefined attributes or qualities or specific goals that students are expected to demonstrate in their career and professional life after the completion of program. These objectives are framed by taking inputs from the industry partners, students, parents, alumni, faculty and administration and are synced with the Vision and Mission of the department.

Program Outcomes (POs): POs are narrow statements that give the competencies, knowledge and behaviour attributes of students through the journey of their learning program. 

Course Outcomes (COs): COs are statements which are more specific to the courses/subjects and are narrower statements that describe the learning expectations from students at the end of each course.

OBE Framework

After the course outcomes have been determined, the assessment techniques must be devised to measure the attainment level of stated outcomes. Assessment is necessary to govern whether a student or learner has achieved the goals set for him. The outcomes will be used as a feedback approach to maintain and enhance the quality in the future. Depending on the desired course outcome, an appropriate assessment method must be chosen.

Analysis of OBE model

The analysis under OBE implementation constitutes Direct and Indirect assessment methods to gauge the learning abilities of students. Direct Assessments measures are devised by the faculty to analyse how well the student has learnt. Direct assessment procedures include assignment, exam, term paper, project, Laboratory Tests, Quizzes etc.

Indirect assessment measures are more concerned with the student’s perspectives, than how well he has learned the course. Unlike Direct methods, under which evidence of students’ learning are collected in the form of results, indirect measures require the faculty to infer the cognitive abilities of students from feedback, surveys, teaching evaluations etc. 

Attainment and Mapping of Learning Outcomes

COs are framed for each course by its respective faculty member using the appropriate action verbs from Bloom’s taxonomy from the first year to the end of the programme Then, using predefined correlation values a mapping matrix is created between COs and POs, under which value 3 is assigned, if the CO matches strongly with a particular PO criterion; 2 if it matches moderately or 1 if the match is low else mark with “ – ”  The total attainment of a program’s outcomes (POs) is calculated by combining direct and indirect attainment numbers in a predetermined proportion and comparing them to a set value. Any differences from the target value calls for the quality improvement measures.

There are many benefits of OBE including:

• The structuring of outcomes and its analysis of attainment increase the commitment and participation of all stakeholders.
• The clarity of learning outcomes, makes the room for teaching practices to be more creative and result oriented.
• The OBE implementation in Colleges and Universities enhances international recognition and job chances on a global scale for graduates.
• Graduates with professional and soft skills, social responsibility, and ethics are more employable and innovative.
• The OBE paradigm empowers the graduates to flourish in their fields and reach new heights in their jobs and studies.
  

Technological OBE implementation in Higher Education Institutes

OBE has become the buzzword in the skill-oriented education system. Every Higher Education Institute is following the progressive OBE implementation path to produce the young mind who can add value to the society. But its implementation introduces challenges of exhaustive designing and mapping of learning outcomes at each stage for each student. But today technology has the solution to nearly all organizational problems. iCloudEMS is a pathfinder for all education management issues. We have come with the ground-breaking solutions to enhance the digital capabilities of Higher Education Institutes for OBE administration and accelerate continuous quality improvement. Our pioneering products and services are designed to achieve high standard in both administrative and non-administrative operations that include:

• A cloud-based server that can hold a large number of data and records for easy record management, allowing teachers to track the learning status of their course outcomes.
• Innovative technologies enabling faculty members to save their time by automating attendance records, timetable creation, assignment posting, and results reporting.
• Course selection and allocation strategies that support Choice Based Credit System and empower a flexible and progressive learning culture. 
• With a creative outcome designing and mapping methodology, OBE-LMS helps to promote an outcomes-oriented learning by providing interesting course content and assignments.
• Implementation of OBE has become essential to oil the wheels of accreditation in Higher Education Institutes and our Accreditation management system automates and aligns the preparation work for accreditation under OBE model.
• Student-lifecycle management system that allows students to access their whole academic experience with a few clicks, empowering student-centric learning and fostering the Continuous Quality Improvement ecosystem.
• Online Classes and Examinations system to promote strategic execution of OBE in all pre and post examination activities, ranging from the preparation of question papers to the publication of final results, all of which take care of designing and mapping of all components with predetermined outcomes.
• A cost-effective and user-friendly portal with robust reporting options for rapid statistical analysis at all levels.
  

Thus, OBE is a paradigm shift in the education system that is focused on successful learning and demonstration of knowledge, skills, abilities, values, leadership and judgement by students. In a convocation event held in a university it was well said by Shri Prakash Javadekar, MHRD that “Education should not just be input-led, but also be outcome-based”. He also added that “We can judge it by sensing whether the students, who have passed, think only of themselves or whether they think of the society also, whether they are good citizens and whether they are inculcating values to make society better,” 

iCloudEMS facilitates college administrators towards the methodical execution of all strategies and workflow under OBE ideology. We offer cloud capabilities to simplify error-prone and hectic analysis and mapping of COs, POs and PEOs. Our powerful analytic and reporting tools ensure the access of outcomes attainment at the fingertips of stakeholders.

A guide on various aspects of Accreditation and how iCloudEMS automates the groundwork of Accreditation for Higher Education Institutes

India has the largest pool of Universities and Colleges to offer Higher Education but with the increase in the number of Higher Education Institutes, the responsibility also gets increased to maintain quality and standards in education. Globalization has removed the boundaries of learning and innovation; thus, exceptional strategies and efforts are necessary to integrate the Indian education system with world-class regulations such as to explore its true potential. The 21st century education system demands improvement in many horizons of our education system including trained staff, infrastructure, facilities, curriculum, assessment that can develop youth with the competencies such as critical thinking, communication skills, research, problem solving skills etc. Our government has brought many meticulous reforms for the development of a globally competitive Higher Education System and encouraged us to make India, the preferred global destination for higher studies. 

Accreditation and its need: The modern education system is more focussed on the holistic development of students that can inculcate professional and technological skills to make them capable of entering in the challenging world. The quality of education standards is required to be raised or maintained continuously to meet the academic demands of the 21st century. Accreditation is a self-raised process of an educational program or institution that involves a systematic mechanism to ascertain that they meet strict quality operational standards. 

While enrolling for a program in an institute, accreditation is the important aspect to look for the reliability of a degree program or institute to check, whether or not the services meet or exceeds minimum quality standards that becomes helpful to student for choosing recognized institution or program.

Some Important Accreditation Bodies Include:

• UGC (University Grants Commission)
• AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education
•  AIU (Association of Indian Universities)
•  NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council)
•  NBA (National Board of Accreditation)
• NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework)
• AIMA (All India Management Association) 
• DCI (Dental Council of India)
•  DEC (Distance Education Council)
• MCI (Medical Council of India)
•  NCTE (National Council for Teacher Education)
• PCI (Pharmacy Council of India)
• VCI (Veterinary Council of India)
• NCHRH (National Council for Human Resource in Health)
  

The Process of Accreditation is more or less the same for all accreditation bodies. Generally, the whole process includes following phases from registration to results:

Importance of Accreditation: Accreditation plays a significant role due to following reasons:

With reference to the above context, one can easily observe the potential of accredited institutes to ensure accountability in the institutes among students and families for their upskilling and advance learning. To achieve the best place in accreditation, institutes are required to undergo rigorous processes for data and reports compilation. We at iCloudEMS are always assisting Higher Education Institutes in upgrading their quality standards with our ingenious products and services. Our accreditation management system is a cloud-based software
which includes SIS and other modules, and is designed for all types of technical and nontechnical Higher Education Institutes, delivering results in accordance with the Washington Accord, LIMA Accord, and Bologna Process.

• Accreditation bodies typically require an analyse data span of several years, but manually organising and formatting such a large amount of data is a laborious process that is prone to redundancy and missing data. Our cloud-based system makes data administration and formatting compliant with rules much easier.
• With only a few clicks, our system can generate a variety of self-assessment and analysis reports, such as SER/SAR/AQAR/IQAC/AACSB, that are necessary for your institution.
• Today, it is essential to upload data to accreditation portals prior to the visit of a peer team; our unique functions make this process easier, including the ability to use prefilled data on the portal during the multiple-year data collection process.
• The information is primarily requested to be entered via responses to a few predetermined questions with respect to different criteria. Our system facilitates the data and results uploading in the same approach.
• Examining one’s own abilities is an important step in the accreditation process, and reports communicate results more effectively than words. We help faculty members by automating the generation of the main self-assessment report, as well as various supporting reports, during accreditation assessments and qualification analysis.
• Through the compilation and management of data in chronological order, our skilled database verification team examines the standards and criteria to be confirmed.
• Institutes can quickly examine the benchmarking standards and acquire a ready reckoner on the present state using our tiered evaluation procedure.
• Our user-friendly system helps the governing bodies in fair and thorough audit of well-organized data and reports with a couple of clicks only.
  

It can be concluded that iCloudEMS offers well governed digital space to automate and simplify the tedious and repetitive activities of accreditation. Our comprehensive Accreditation management system enables an error-free mapping of learning outcomes with the institute’s mission and vision, for quality monitoring and improvement. Today in the competitive era, it is the best time for Higher Education Institutes to invest in a digital partner like iCloudEMS that can align the workflow with the visionary strategies of the institute to ensure quality assurance and improvement on a regular basis.

How digitization empowers the growth of Higher Education Institutes and the role of iCloudEMS in bringing this digital transformation

In today’s era of computerization, the technology is stretching its wings day by day to improve the digital capabilities of organizations and individuals. Automation and storage are two important horizons of technology that aid the progress of organizations transforming their workflow in quick and inexpensive form.  Many developing technologies such as cloud-computing, internet of things, machine learning etc. are contributing to the enhancement of learning, collaborating, and decision making of organizations.

NEP 2020 has advocated the integral use of technology in Higher Education to transform traditional education systems to digitally empowered education systems. NEP has recommended the use of advanced technologies including Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, Smart classrooms etc. to foster flexible and student-centric learning where focus is on the learning accomplishments rather than the content of learning. Technology catalyses the fulfilment of highest priorities and overcomes various challenges in education sector that include:

• Web-enabled functionalities for the alignment of administration with visionary strategies.

• Smart analytics utilities to gauge students’ learning and program efficiency.
• Technology enabled services for the faculty to enrich the course curriculum and develop e-learning resources.
• Digital environment to help faculty and students to be part of advanced learning and research across borders.
• Technology adaptive pedagogy and research practices to achieve a competitive edge in knowledge and learning.
• Optimum utilization of institutional resources.
  

All these digital capabilities focus on the multiple dimension growth of core functions of the Higher Education Institutes to encourage sustainable functioning models of tech-savvy campuses.

NEP 2020 has taken following major initiatives regarding leveraging technology in teaching-learning measures of Higher Education Institutes to ensure holistic development of students:

• Agencies, such as the NETF, CIET, NIOS, IGNOU, IITs, NITs, etc. will be identified to integrate online education for continuous improvement alongside considering its downside effects on students’ activities. 
• The establishment of open, interoperable technology-based infrastructure in the education sector that can give solutions to solve major challenges of the nation related to India’s scale, diversity, complexity and device penetration. 
• Online teaching platforms such as SWAYAM, DIKSHA, will be included to provide teachers with a structured, user-friendly, rich set of e-learning tools for monitoring progress of learners. 
• An online repository for content creation and dissemination will be established for the creation of coursework, Learning Games & Simulations, augmented reality and virtual reality along with a transparent system for ratings by users on effectiveness and quality. 
• Innovative solutions will be framed to address the digital divide for which existing mass media, such as television, radio, and community radio will be extensively used for 24/7 telecast and broadcasts of educational programmes in all Indian languages.
• Virtual labs will be created leveraging online platforms such as DIKSHA, SWAYAM and SWAYAMPRABHA to encourage equal access to quality practical and hands-on experiment-based learning experiences.
• Special training and incentives for teachers will be encouraged to facilitate learner-centric education and creation of high-quality online content.
• Appropriate bodies will be designed and implemented for developing assessment frameworks and analytics using modern education technologies.
• The deployment of blended models of learning will be fostered to maintain hybrid learning approach while promoting digital learning and education, the importance of face-to-face in-person learning is fully recognized. Accordingly, different effective models of blended learning will be identified for appropriate replication for different subjects.
  

It is well mentioned in NEP 2020 that technology in education is a journey and not a destination and capacity will be needed to orchestrate the various ecosystem players to implement policy objectives. In the light of pandemic digitization has been proved the life-saviour for organizations. The education paradigm shifted to remote learning overnight. In such time of crisis, thankfully some Education management systems such as iCloudEMS paved the way to uninterrupted learning & administration and replaced the chalk and board model with the digital learning in a blink of eye iCloudEMS is a market-leader that offers cloud-based Education Management to bring digital transformation in Higher Education Universities to handle every vital operation and cater the needs of all stakeholders for accomplishment of more creative and productive goals. Our ingenious services and products bridge the gap between teaching and effective learning and also extends the digital capabilities of institutes in terms of infrastructure, ecosystem development, assessment, learning, and teaching. Our major key areas include:

• Cloud-based platform to store massive amounts of data and records that can be accessed without any time or place constraints, such technology eliminates the manual storage and retrieval of information, and along with its limitations.
• Digital medium to choose and allot the courses of students in line with CBCS guidelines, the credits and other attributes of courses are also saved digitally.
• Personal Learning Management System that aids the creativity in course creation and delivery under OBE framework and makes the learning flexible and student-centric for upskilling the students.
• Student lifecycle management system for the digital organization of the integrated academic journey of students from being prospective to alumni.
• Accreditation management system that automates the groundwork of accreditation and simplifies the compilation of bulk data and reports for the associated staff members.
• Online Classes and Exam management system for the quality learning and assessment with clearly mapping of results to measure the accomplishment of learning goals.
• Managed services for ERP of Higher Education Institutes that offer a paper-free approach for important academic and non-academic tasks of Colleges and Universities and assist in channelizing the efforts of faculty in upgrading the standards of research & innovation.
  

Information technology has brought agility into the educational sector by restructuring the work situations, abridging thoughts from actions and redefining the approaches to mitigate the ongoing complexities of various activities in institutes. In this technofix age, iCloudEMS always comes forward in upgrading Higher Education Institutes with its web-based products and services as we believe that the success of any educational institution is directly proportional to the ability to comprehend, accept and integrate new and effective result-oriented technology into its work.