The Wiley Handbook of Sustainability in Higher Education Learning and Teaching. Группа авторов

3 Outcome‐Based Education Toward Achieving Sustainable Goals in Higher Education

       G. R. Sinha, Nanda Gunawardhana, and Chih‐Peng Fan

3.1 Outcome‐Based Education (OBE) and its Significance

      Among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (García Reyes 2013; Swaminathan and Kesavan 2016; Hall and Tandon 2017; Rieckmann et al. 2017; TWI2050 – The World in 2050 2018; UN and Australian Government 2018; Franco et al. 2019; Kioupi and Voulvoulis 2019; Marshall and Oxfam Education 2019; Wright 2014; Nations 2015; Swaminathan and Kesavan 2016; UNESCO 2016; van't Land and Herzog 2017; UN and Australian Government 2018; Kioupi and Voulvoulis 2019; UNESCO 2019; Sinha 2021), sustainable growth in higher education has been placed in the important position of SDG 4 and it has been envisaged that by 2030 equality in access and the right to education will be same for all, including women, across the world. Education is key to resolving a number of problems that lead to socioeconomic challenges everywhere, and thus education and appropriate awareness among people in general can act as solution to most of the problems. A number of reforms, policies, strategies, and transformation measures have been developed from time to time in the field of education. In this chapter, the emphasis is given to higher education in which the OBE framework (Pritchett 2015; Kioupi and Voulvoulis 2019; UNESCO 2019; UNICEF 2019; Sinha 2021) has great significance and suggests that the outcome of education lies in the true assessment of student learning outcomes (SLOs) (Pritchett 2015; Kioupi and Voulvoulis 2019; UNESCO 2019; UNICEF 2019).

      OBE‐based education does not only empower the students or learners in developing the academic quality but strengthens a set of employability skills (Franco et al. 2019) in them. This set of skills helps develop competence in learners that enables further excellence. The ultimate goal of education is to achieve or to strive toward excellence, leading to an improvement in quality in life. As we know, OBE is envisaged to ensure the actual SLOs and should be reflected in activities, performance, acts, behavior, and attitude of the students when placed in industries or workplace. Generally, SLOs are articulated or formulated by keeping in mind the following important components of higher education organizations:

Every organization has its specific vision and mission statements (Coughlan 2011; Kioupi and Voulvoulis 2019) along with some short range goals (SRGs) and long range goals (LRGs) (Swaminathan and Kesavan 2016; Hall and Tandon 2017; UN and Australian Government 2018; Kioupi and Voulvoulis 2019). These goals, mission, and vision statements play a most significant role in formulating PEOs and POs; of course, POs (García Reyes 2013; UNESCO 2016; United Nations Development Programme 2017) are just expected outcomes which need to be truly validated at the end of the program if the POs are mapped with set PEOs. This requires an important process used in higher education and its transformation (Sinha 2021) that maps the relevance and the extent to which POs are actually seen in the students. The PEOs are major objective statements of specific programs and thus each program in a university department will have its own PEOs that are written not as simple statements but are formulated taking a number of stakeholders into consideration. The formulation of PEOs and POs involves a strong interaction and network with following stakeholders:

      This list of stakeholders (Franco et al. 2019; Kioupi and Voulvoulis 2019) plays a large role in articulating PEOs and POs because the expectations and dreams of each of the stakeholders are taken into consideration. Each program offers a number of courses and thus COs will be associated with all the courses offered (Coughlan 2011), and also the course educational objectives (CEOs). Before mapping happens between POs and PEOs, the same process needs to be performed to see whether envisaged COs are in congruence with the CEOs. In addition, the COs will be a subset of the POs and thus achieving or attaining a particular CO means contributing something toward any one of the POs. Vision and mission statements are also devised for departments and can be derived or formulated by keeping in mind the vision and mission statements of the overall organization. The mapping of SLOs with PEOs is explained in Section 3.2 with examples of practices that have been adopted to actually measure the attainment of SLOs in the students.

      The CO can be expressed as: CO = {CO1, CO2, CO3, CO4, CO5, CO6, CO7,…} where {CO1, CO2, CO3, CO4, CO5, CO6, CO7,…} are, respectively, COs of course 1, course 2, course 3, and so on. Similarly, we can also write the PO as a sum or union of the POs of various programs. In addition, the PO is attributed to a number of COs. There are multiple COs because of the number of courses offered in the program, each with specific objectives and learning outcomes. The SLO are used to assess the impact of teaching learning and bringing about change in learners or students.

      3.1.1 Significance of OBE

In the last decade, competition among the young has become tough in the job market and candidates can perform badly, even if they are employed in a good workplace. This happens because they do not possess a set of appropriate skills. A candidate or graduate can get employed or receive a job offer, that might be based on a strong academic background leading to the first impression of them during the interview as being satisfactory; however, this does not mean that the candidate is competent. This is a gray area to which most academic organizations do not pay attention, concentrating more on strengthening academic performance. The true significance of the OBE framework lies in ensuring a holistic view of studies; it not only requires good academic performance but a set of skills as well. The most important set of graduate skills needed to ensure that the SLOs are measurable, are: