A Novel and Holistic Approach for the Estimation of the Attainment of Learning Outcomes for an Effective OBE Implementation

Abstract

The International Engineering Alliance (IEA) plays a vital role in promoting the mobility of the Engineering Professionals through various accords and agreements within the signatory countries. It aims to recognize the locally accredited Engineering programmes in the signatory countries and provide mobility to the graduates across its signatories. These accords provide a common set of graduate attributes for the various levels of the engineering profession such as Professional Engineer, Engineering Technologist and Engineering Technician. The Washing Accord, Sydney Accord and Dublin Accord provide the necessary guidelines to implement the required competencies for Professional Engineering, Engineering Technologist and Engineering Technicians standards respectively through effective outcome-based education. The Engineering Programmes offered at Villa College Maldives are designed to fully adhere to the Washington Accord standards in order to ensure the attainment of the graduate attributes. In general, engineering graduates are expected to possess the specialization-based engineering knowledge, problem analytical skills, design and development knowledge to find solution for complex engineering problems, well versed in modern tools, with adequate knowledge on sustainability and environment, with the awareness of the responsibilities of an engineer in the society, possess the engineering ethical skills, ability to communicate well, with teamwork qualities, project management and finance skills and lifelong learning habits. A dedicated OBE Tool to correlate the module learning outcomes to the programme learning outcomes is designed and developed to ensure that all the assessments implemented in the programme delivery appropriately measure the attainment of the Complex Engineering Problems, Knowledge Profiles and the Engineering activities as per the IEA accord standards. This paper provides the technical details of the design, different types of reports generated and the techniques adopted in the proposed OBE Tool for the measurement of the attainment of the learning outcomes of the course, programme and graduates.