Outcome-Based Education: Response To Quality Learning: What Is OBE?
Outcome-Based Education: Response To Quality Learning: What Is OBE?
Outcome-Based Education: Response To Quality Learning: What Is OBE?
What is OBE?
OBE is a process of curriculum design, teaching, learning and assessment that
focuses on what students can actually do after ther are taught. The basic tenets of OBE
were advanced by the American Sociologist, William Spady, who defines OBE as … a
comprehensive approach to organizing and operating an education system that is
focused on and defined by the successful demonstrations of learning sought from each
student (Spady, 1994:2)
1. Clarity of focus about outcomes – Learners are certain about their goals and
are always given significant, culminating exit outcomes.
2. Designing backwards – Using the major learning outcomes as the focus and
linking all planning, teaching and assessment decision directly to these outcomes.
3. Consistent, high expectations of success – Helping students to succeed by
providing the encouragement to engage deeply with the issues they are learning
and to achieve the set of high challenging standard.
4. Expanded opportunity – Developing curriculum that allows every learner to
progress in his/her own pace and that caters to individual needs and differences.
instruction: It is what the students do as evidence of their learning. OBTL has a three-
pronged implication: for learners/students, it prootes a deep and lifeling learning skills;
for the teachers, it promotes reflective teaching practices, and for the Institution, it
addresses continuous program improvement.
The OBE curriculum is driven by Assessments that focus on well-defined learning
outcomes and not primarily by factors such as what is taught, how long the students take
to chieve the outcomes or which path the students take to achieve their target (Kissane,
1995). The learning outcomes are projected on a gradation of increasing complexity tat
students are expected to master sequentially.
The full implementation an success of OBE demands a concerted effort, as in the
old aphorism: It takes a village to educate a child. There is an urgent call for all
concerned to keep the rhythm in the steady march of humanity’s progress: for educators,
strategizing educational planning that is results oriented; for learners, assuming greater
responsibility and actively participating in the learning process; and for parents and the
community at large, exercising their right to ensure that the quality of education for the
next generation is not compromised by social, political and economic concerns.