Attainment Of Program Outcomes Research Articles

Structured Evaluation of Laboratory Course Content for Better Attainment of Program Outcomes

Abstract Assessment methods play a vital role in the process of implementation of OBE. Assessment methods must be aligned with the intended learning outcomes. The methods adopted for evaluation should help the learners to progress and the learning experience should be validated by achieving the learning outcomes systematically. Therefore, the proper assessment of laboratory course content is demonstrated by considering Power Electronics Laboratory course which is usually offered at the pre final year of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Undergraduate Program. The traditional pedagogy practiced till now was ineffective in assessing the laboratory experiments in terms of conduction, analysis of results, documentation and open ended experiments [4-5]. This has led to the poor attainment of Program Outcomes (PO) as the evaluation methods followed and the design of rubrics did not support the PO attainment. To take care of the aforementioned issue, the laboratory assessment was categorized into different modules like demonstration or conduction, analysis of results, documentation and open ended experiments. This division will help in addressing the POs pertaining to both technical and professional.

Outcome-based Education: An Outline

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.

Attainment of Program Outcomes under Psychomotor Domain for Civil Engineering Undergraduate Students

Psychomotor domain involves physical movement, coordination and applied motor-skill areas, where substantial practices are needed in order to develop these skills overtime. Assessment of psychomotor domain can be carried out in aspects of speed, precision, distance, procedures. The attainment for program outcomes under psychomotor domain can be measured by using direct and explicit assessment. Majority of the lecturers lack the necessary practical experience to relate with fundamentals in order to practice and to give examples resulted in the students not being able to relate theory with practice and apply their knowledge to solve practical problems. This paper identifies the important attributes of students in attaining psychomotor skills in laboratory courses using a program outcome (PO) related to investigation aspects. Majority of the respondents indicated that they have acquired the necessary skills under psychomotor domain related to problem identification, procedure determination, apparatus usage, data collection, results interpretation and proposition of viable solutions. Direct attainment shows that the students passed the PO designed for the laboratory courses. Using relative important index (RII), important factors influencing students’ attainment on psychomotor skills are the condition of equipment in the laboratories, lecturers’ clear instructions before the student conduct experiment and the conducive environment to conduct experiment. A conducive environment with adequate equipment and supported by lecturers to carry out effective investigation give opportunity to the students to acquire and improve their psychomotor skills. This study is important to understand psychomotor elements attained by the students and how assessment is carried out effectively.

A Comparative Analysis of Attainment of Program Outcomes for Courses with and without the Use of Modern Tools

An important consideration in higher education is that graduates meet or exceed the program outcomes (POs). While there exists anecdotal evidence that the use of modern tools i.e. computer modelling and simulation, improve attainment of these outcomes, there is little empirical research available. Where empirical evidence is available, the variables considered would almost certainly have a bearing on the outcomes. In this work, the attainment of the POs by undergraduate engineering students in courses with and without the use of modern tools, based on quantitative data, were compared. It was hypothesized that courses using modern tools would lead to better overall attainment of POs, compared to courses not using these tools. As a case study, the PO attainment of students in the Mechanical Engineering undergraduate program at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) was considered. Quantitative data obtained through UTP's outcomebased education (OBE) software was used to assess the overall attainment of the POs for all courses for a cohort of 126 Mechanical Engineering undergraduate students class of 2017. It was found that, for the case study considered, the usage of modern tools has led to slightly better attainment of some POs, with slightly poorer attainment in other POs. Specifically, attainment in POs where the cognitive or the knowledge domain is more dominant improved, as the usage of modern tools helped students to understand theoretical concepts better. Attainment in POs were the affective domain is more dominant recorded a slight decrease, and the incorporation of modern tools did not aid in the attainment of these POs. The study is at a preliminary stage and a more detailed study, involving more cohorts, is planned to establish a correlation (if any) between the use of modern tools in higher education and attainment of POs.

Attainment of Course Outcomes: - A Sample Empirical Case Study for Incorporating Outcome Based Education

Outcome based education (OBE) is now inevitable and is a directive for education as per standards stated by National board of accreditation (NBA). Course outcomes (CO) and Program outcomes (PO) are two crucial aspects pertaining towards effective OBE incorporation. To achieve this, mapping of course outcomes with program outcomes is a major concern. As per accreditation guidelines of NBA direct and indirect tools must be deployed for calculating the attainment of Program Outcomes. Certain CO-PO mapping strategies must also be defined. This paper presents an empirical case study of the subject Operating Systems and Administration in the third Semester of Computer engineering curricula of Savitiri bai Phule Pune University (SPPU), India. The Paper gives a threefold contribution: - a) proposes an empirical algorithm to estimate the correlation between the CO and PO. b) Three direct schemes of CO attainment are designed along with two indirect schemes c) Final attainment estimation is done by integrating the above proposed schemes.

Computing Attainment of Program Outcomes by Associating Credit Based Weight Factor of the Components of Curriculum

The attainment of program outcomes (POs) is generally computed by considering 80% contribution from the Course Outcomes (COs) of courses of study and 20% contribution from the Graduate Exit Survey. This contribution of COs to POs takes into account the strength of mapping of COs based on Bloom's taxonomical level to the corresponding POs.; however ignores the fractional contributions of the components of the curriculum in terms of the ratio of cumulative credits of that component to the total credits of the entire curriculum. In this paper, we propose the computation of attainment of POs by associating this additional weight factor- to be called as Credit Weight Factor (CWF)- by considering the AICTE proposed model curriculum for UG program in Engineering.

Course Outcome-Program Outcome Mapping Matrix & Attainment-Issues and Model Based Solutions for Tier II Category

One of the important element of Outcome Based Education(OBE) is establishment and attainment of Course Outcomes(COs) and Program Outcome(POs). POs are designed at program level considering knowledge and skills of the students and should demonstrate its attainment at the completion of course and program. COs are knowledge and skills that are formulated for each course. These COs are mapped to POs and attainment of each PO is calculated by various tools considering set target levels. Depending on target level achieved, action plan is decided at course level as well as program level for improvement if attainment level is weak. There are many difficulties in calculating attainment of COs and POs particularly in programs affiliated to university. In this paper two different models are developed for mapping and attainment of COs and POs. The results are tested for Electronics Engineering program affiliated to university. Major difficulty is in the attainment of course outcome due to university examination. The various issues in mapping and attainment are addressed in this paper with reference to June 2015 Self-Assessment Report.

A Novel Method for Attainment Measurement of CO’s and PO’s for Tier-II Institutions

National Board of accreditation accredits various programs of technical institution in India. It is a quality assurance process that determines whether the educational objectives set by the institutes are being continually and honestly perceived or not. In this process, a graduate is expected to have certain qualities, during and after the completion of his/her graduation and are called Program Outcomes (PO) and are also referred to as Graduate Attributes. In this paper, we have proposed a novel method for measurement of attainment of CO's and PO's for Tier-II institutions. The measurement of attainment of COs and POs is illustrated for a course in Electrical and electronics engineering program. The proposed method helps in preparing effective lesson plan, drawing quality question paper.

Cognitive Based Course Activity:An Opportunity to Enhance Deficient Skills

The proposal describes about a course activity designed for sixth semester students of Instrumentation Technology for the course Process Control and Automation. As the activity demands technical, writing and oral presentation skills, students were accordingly grouped based on their capabilities they possess which in turn helps to enhance the other skills they lack. The activity designed focuses on identification and study of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) required in the field of automation, deployment of automation concepts for development of ptototypes and usage of virtual instrumentation tool for implementation of controller principles. This activity has positive effect on personal and interpersonal development of students as well between peer communities. Progress justification can be made by mapping the performance indicators formed for the evaluation of activity with the attainment of program outcomes.

Software Development for Course and Program Outcome Attainment

In today's competitive world, every institute needs to keep their academic standard as high as possible. It becomes mandatory for all most all the institutes to maintain the quality in technical education as well as to produce the skilled graduates. In order to produce the skill graduates, the Institute always rely on different programs which is responsible for producing the high calibre graduate. As of now, there is no such application available which will automate at least the process of reducing the clerical work required for preparing the course file to evaluate the Course Outcome with Program Outcome .NBA has laid down the guidelines for each program through the means of rubrics to undergo this evaluation process which implies the accreditation grade to be given from NBA committee. This application allows the faculty to enter the details about their courses in terms of mapping with PO, PSO and Bloom's Taxonomy. The application calculates the PO attainment which helps the faculty about the existing gap which further can be improved in the next semester.Hence such type of application will assist the faculty to reduce their workload regarding the individual course.

Attainment of Program Outcome '3B' of ABET through Laboratory Experiment for the Undergraduate Program

Attainment of Program Outcome '3B' of ABET through Laboratory Experiment for the Undergraduate Program

Categorized Laboratory Course Content towards Better Attainment of Program Outcome - Better Attainment of PO by Categorization

Categorized Laboratory Course Content towards Better Attainment of Program Outcome - Better Attainment of PO by Categorization

Attainment of Program Outcome '3b' of ABET through Laboratory Experiment for the Undergraduate Program

The engineering education has gone through several re-engineering efforts under various names. Some of the popular names in the past have been sustainable engineering and concurrent engineering. While each of these names has a different flavor to it, the underlying principle of effective engineering education has been its ability to provide practical and functional learning opportunities to students. Experiential learning, which encompasses all types of practice-based learning opportunities, is the founding principle of a successful engineering education model. This paper presents an approach to enhance active and collaborative learning in 'Metal Cutting' laboratory by the undergraduate students of V Semester Industrial&Production Engineering using the concept of Design of Experiments, to study the effects of various parameters on machining performance. The paper also describes the assessment of program outcome '3b' of ABET criteria through laboratory experiment.

Categorized Laboratory Course Content towards Better Attainment of Program Outcome - Better Attainment of PO by Categorization

Enzyme Technology theory and laboratory course; usually offered at second year of undergraduate program in Biotechnology is one of the foundational courses. Traditionally laboratory component provides hands on experience to conduct experiment, immobilize enzyme and assay the enzyme samples. However the conventional pedagogy practiced till date, was unable to meet the metric goal set for certain program outcomes (PO). The lack in design of term-works at various levels, improper evaluation criteria and lack of rubrics could be the most contributing factors for poor attainment of PO. To address this issue, we categorized the laboratory term works into four categories demonstration, exercise, structured enquiry and open ended experiment. Term works were carefully designed to address major technical POs and some of professional POs. Evaluation criteria for each term work are mapped to Program outcome (PO), Outcome Element (OE) and Performance Indicator (PI). This helps us in assessing the attainment of POs more precisely. The students were expected to carry-out literature review and design the experiment, with due consideration to resources & feasibility. They carry out experiments, analyze and interpret the solution. The assessment of PO attainment through continuous internal evaluation reveals significant improvement in the achievement of program outcomes. To summarize the categorization of experiments, mapping evaluation criteria to PO, OE and PI, as well as rubrics designed for evaluation, improved the attainment of PO. The exercise also provides better learning experience among students.

Attaining Computer Network Course Outcomes through Activities and Statistical Analysis of Simulation Results using SPSS Tool

One of the important aspects of the outcome based Education (OBE) is the assessment of course outcomes (CO). As we have adopted the OBE framework for our programme. we have integrated the theory and laboratory course and conducted activities to achieve the course outcome of Computer Network course. As we know the tollgate courses have multiple prerequisite courses and to attain the course outcome the learning of these prerequisite courses can be applied in this course. The union of the attainment of the outcome sets of all the tollgate courses can be viewed as program outcome attainment. Fundamentally any tollgate course is progressive in the attainment of the outcomes. A Computer Network is one such toll gate course for computer science and engineering programme positioned during the sixth semester. The concepts of basic subjects like data structures, algorithms, object oriented programming, operating system are prerequisites which are used to solve a large problem. The authors have attempted to measure the outcomes of this tollgate course through theory and laboratory activities. One activity on the client server computational overview was tried to address the issues related to fault tolerant systems. Other activity defined to understand the network behavior for given parameters to apply the statistical techniques for the simulated results.

Program Outcomes Measurement and Assessment Processes

The current engineering program accreditation criteria requires an effective program outcome (PO) assessment procedure along with well documented results, a complete description of the evaluation process that involves extensive participation of the faculty members. To achieve all these, an effective method to estimate students’ performance as well as the effectiveness of the program outcomes (PO) is required. As such, the direct assessment method has been identified and deemed suitable to directly assessed specific students’ knowledge during examination or through skills observation. Specifically, this work reports the effort made by the Department of Electrical, Electronics and System, (EESE), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) to implement the direct assessment method to measure the PO achievement of its students. This is in line with the EESE Dept.’s continuous quality improvement (CQI) practice to improve its PO assessment method before the next visit by the Accreditation Council in 2011. To do so, the assessment results from each semester of the academic sessions 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 are analysed to produce the annual PO. Measurement of PO achievement is carried out on selected sampled courses. In selecting the courses for the assessment, at least two courses from each academic year that are offered in the two different semesters are selected. Since the academic program is a 4 year program, 8 courses need to be selected for the purpose. Accordingly, this paper is written to describe the assessment method used to measure the PO via direct assessment of the course outcomes (Cos) as an improvement to previous practice where the COs were assessed indirectly using survey and examination results. The direct assessment results showed that the average PO attainment for both academic session 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 are greater than 3.0 and fulfils the benchmark value set by the department. Nevertheless, the Dept. is still putting up an effort to improve the assessment method in order to find the best method to directly assess both COs and POs simultaneously.