Outcome Based Education - Design Delivery and Assessment of Product Design and Development Course at Undergraduate Engineering Program

Abstract

The implementation of Outcome Based Education (OBE) has been the focus of attention of technical institutions in India, often regarded as compliance driven instead of performance driven because of the mandatory requirement of NBA accreditation. Though the implementation seems very structured on paper, it involves daunting data collection process which results in lack of commitment among faculty members in ensuring success of OBE to reap the full benefits. This study reports the implementation of outcome based course design based on intended course learning outcomes (CLOs), planning the instruction delivery to get the intended outcomes to match learning preferences of students and assessment of course outcomes and measuring the attainment of outcomes as against the target for the continuous quality improvement. The New Product design & Development course offered as an open elective at seventh semester of undergraduate programme is chosen. A heterogeneous batch of 5 engineering programs has opted for this course, which is first time offered as open elective. The challenge lies in designing the curriculum to meet specific POs of five programs, designing the instructional delivery to address the students learning styles of different background and assessment tools and the attainment. The moderate target of 60-65 percent COs attainment target was kept and could be able to achieve about 55 percent attainment and this gap has given a lot of inputs for CQI of course design, delivery & assessment. The learning out of this course feedback has helped to improve the all aspects of course and look to a strong mapping with indentified program outcomes.