Mapping Graduate Attributes of NBA with the Program Outcomes of the ABET/OBE to Establish Consistency Between the Two

Abstract

The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) in India has come up with a new requirement in its document published in January 2013 – which is a complete overhaul of what it was a few years ago. The expectations of NBA for an engineering educational institution are now driven by graduate attributes – the qualities that a graduating student has to demonstrate for having possessed through the engineering education. The graduate attributes mentioned in the NBA document are comparable with the more familiar program outcomes (POs) – the term used in Outcome-Based Education (OBE) framework and also in the ABET document to measure the attainment status of competence of professionals. The competence is also measured subsequently through Program Educational Objectives (PEOs) after 3–5 years of graduation which is beyond the present scope. Many engineering institutes in India have started work on implementing OBE framework with program outcomes as the measure of attainment of attributes expected of a graduating engineer. Such institutes are in an ambiguous state as to how they can switch their processes to meeting the new NBA requirement of addressing graduate attributes from the program outcomes that they have acquired familiarity with. The paper shows how the graduate attributes can be mapped to POs in institutes offering undergraduate engineering education so that one can continue with the established processes of measuring the attainment status of program outcomes and also meet the requirements of NBA.