Guidelines for preparing for Accreditation process

Quite often it has been felt that faculties are not aware of the writing the course outcome as per the requirement of the NBA. In this article, the emphasis is to give some practical guidelines for a systematic approach to preparing the programme educational outcome, programme specific outcome and the course outcome.

The first step is to prepare the program educationaloutcomes (PEO). PEOs are statements that describe the career and professional achievement the program is preparing the graduates to Achieve within first few years after graduation. The consideration for writing the PEO are :

·         PEOs  Should be consistent with the mission of the institution.

·         PEOs should be achievable by the program

·         PEOs should be based on the needs of the industry.

·         Also for writing the PEOs, feedback must be collected from the stake holders including professional bodies, industry where the students get placed, alumni, management and even the trends in the development of professionals.

Suppose a department writes her PEO-1 as to produce excellent professional who can take challenging assignment in R&D, and if the students employment is in local software industry or in maintenance activities, then that PEO is not correct for that department.

The second step is to keep in mind the summary of the graduate attribute. A total of 12 graduate attributes have been defined, five of which are of cognitive domain that expects the learning /outcome on the main domain of technical course. These are Knowledge, Analysis, Design, Investigation, Modern Tool Usage. These are the minimum requirement to qualify for the accreditation. The level of institute to institute will differ in the depth or the complexity to which these have been implemented that is complexity of each of them. That makes an institute to be accredited higher than the other institute. The first five cognitive level of POs are:

·         Solving-ability

·         Analysis-ability

·         Design-ability

·         Investigation-ability

·         Modern Tool Use-ablity

There are seven domain independent attributes that are to be attained while teaching domain dependant course are being taught.  For example, ethics, team work and communication can be imparted not as a subject but as part of the domain specific courses. For example through assignment, projects, presentations etc. he learns how to write technical articles, team work can be taught by giving group activity, ethics attained through assignment.

Program Specific Outcomes(PSO) should also be written by each program, while writing the PSOs, considerations must be given to the domain specific programme outcomes. Suppose a department is very strong in VLSI area then the PSO must reflect the outcomes in VLSI area. And the domain specific PO must have a reflection of VLSI domain.

Next every course faculty must write their own course outcomes from the learner’s point of view, those are achievable by the students. Course outcome should aim to develop higher order skill inof  in each domain of learning. Evaluation, Synthesis, Analysis are typical example of cognitive level of learning. While writing the course outcome (Cos) action verbs as defined in Bloom’s Texonomy must be used keeping in view the program outcomes. The minimum requirement of PO1 is “Apply the knowledge  of mathematics, natural science, engineering fundamental and an engineering specification to  the solution of a complex engineering problem”

This confirms that the minimum requirement is the solution of complex engineering problem. Once the clarity on Pos then we should proceed for writing the CO. Many professors confuse while writing their CO. Cos are broad statements that will be achievable at the end of the course.  The following strategy is best fit while writing the CO:

1.       Course Level:

a.       Write the course overview: One paragraph on motivation, as why the student should read this course, and one paragraph on the course coverage.

b.      Write course level learning outcome

c.       Course level practice problem as part of the attainment

2.       Module Level:

a.       Write the module overview.

b.      Write module level learning outcome

c.       Write module level practice problem as part of the attainment

d.      Write module level learning strategy including additional learning material

3.       Unit or Lecture Level

a.       Write each lecture overview/summary.

b.      Write each lecture level learning outcome

c.       Write each lecture  level practice problem as part of the attainment

With these guidelines a course faculty/instructor shall be able to write the correct course outcome and the department will also be able to write its programme educational and program specific outcomes.