Topic objective and outcome: performance indicators in knowledge transfer through in-depth curriculum content analysis

Abstract

Abstract The work present an initiative to identify relevance of each topic, taught in a Course under a Curriculum, with respect to Graduate Attribute (GA) under the framework of Outcome Based Education (OBE). The motivation behind this work is the ever increasing need of demand–driven education, learning centric environment and emerging trends of OBE. It has to be observed that plenty of literatures are available in the areas Program Educational Objective (PEO) and Program Outcome (PO) under and beyond accreditation process. Even Course Objective (co) and Course Outcome (CO) have widely been circulated in the literature from which the formulation of syllabus in an autonomous educational framework through stakeholders feedback initiates. However, the concept of Topic Objective (to) and Topic Outcome (TO) is yet to be circulated widely in the literature. The objective of the presented work is thus to identify relevance of each topic included in the curriculum and anticipate its correlation with topics forgoing and afterwards with expected outcome of learning. So, if Program Educational Objective (PEO) and Program Outcome (PO) is an effort with broader perspective, Course Objective (co) and Course Outcome (CO) are at micro-level, then Topic Objective (to) and Topic Outcome (TO) is a nano-level initiative intended to identify the relevance during knowledge transfer process under the framework of OBE. In the model formulation of the process, in a multiple levels, first the position of Curriculum and Syllabus in the entire knowledge –transfer mechanism has been identified. In the next level, the Process Control Flow of designing curriculum with stakeholder’s feedback is presented in which the correlating CO with PO and PO vs GA with a reverse engineering approach has been presented. At final level, a sample course module comprised of various topics has been identified in which each topic under session plan is linked to PO and thereby GA. The underlying idea of this top-down back propagation in a bottom-up Outcome Based Frame work mechanism is driven by the following fact. When curriculum content analysis (CCE) is practiced during construction of Lesson Plan and Session Plan at individual (Course Instructor) level, the bottom up formulation under OBE works fine, but, when it comes to outcome based assessment/evaluation, the formulation of questions often failed to get the desired balance even at Course Objective level, thereby all question in a topic converging to same or few Program Outcome (and thereby GA). Effort has been made in this reverse approach, to incorporate the topic (say knowledge representation) in a Syllabus of a course (viz. Artificial Intelligence) in such a way, that the constraint faced during outcome based evaluation can be addressed. Furthermore, it can also be measured that with how much correlated/interdisciplinary-way the topics are flowered in course which is always a priority under OBE.