Consultancy Expertise

OBE is much more than a learning model or instructional technique that can simply be delegated to instructors. Doing OBE Right requires deep change in almost every aspect of a system’s organizing principles and operations. Making systemic change happen requires committed, informed, insightful leadership, not just administrative directives or management demands. This hands-on component of our work spells out the many organizational elements that leaders must address, build support for, and change, and it develops the relevant orientations and strategies they will need to accomplish these ends.

OBE represents a fundamental departure from long-established, familiar ways of educating children and young adults. That departure involves values, beliefs, assumptions, goals, priorities, professional identities, organizational structures and practices that constitute both the ‘craft’ of educating and the ‘culture’ in which the process of educating plays out. The significance and details of this departure will be welcomed by some and resisted by others, but in all cases it requires active engagement of all constituents in the philosophical, substantive, and technical aspects of what an authentic approach to OBE entails. This component spells out both the substance and strategies of preparing all parties with the understandings and tools essential to a sound and successful implementation process.

Outcomes represent the ultimate purpose for which an extended learning process exists, They are both culminating demonstrations of that purpose, and they need to endure far beyond the learning experiences themselves – into the future and into life. To be both credible and relevant, Outcomes must also have an explicit and sound rationale from which they are explicitly derived and than carefully defined in clear, descriptive words. – not numbers. This critical component of an OBE model requires strong language and analytical skills, which then also apply to how and when the Outcomes are to be addressed and integrated in designing learning experiences that, In turn, encourage and support their accomplishment and ongoing application.

Outcomes – culminating demonstrations of learning – take many forms, ranging from very simple skills to increasingly complex configurations of knowledge and abilities. The latter are called role performances, or performance roles, that are the essential components of virtually all life roles. These future-focused life-performance abilities are represented in a variety of versatile and compelling formats and have defined the ever-evolving cutting-edge of OBE designs and learning experiences for the past three decades. Once well understood and defined, they can be effectively applied from the earliest primary grades to advanced professional preparation programs, thereby adding vision, cohesion, and consistency to the entire learning system.

The knowledge and skills students develop during their formal education is a small fraction of what they will have to learn throughout their lifetimes. Therefore, the most critical abilities they can develop and sustain while in the system are the drive, skills, and resourcefulness to be a self-directed learner. While appealing on its face, most curricula and degree programs are so filled with required learning and assignments impede rather than foster this essential capacity. In effect, they require student compliance more than they encourage self-direction, self-exploration, and genuine empowerment. This component highlights Outcomes, instruction, and learning processes that directly foster and embody these critical abilities and attributes.

As OBE’s ultimate mission has deepened and transformed over the decades, so have the Outcome frameworks educators have used to elevate the quality and qualities of their graduates. Key among them is an emphasis on professionalism that embodies and reflects qualities of genuine professionals – qualities of service and integrity that engender trust and reinforce expertise. This component explains how these qualities can be fostered and modeled within the institution and the cultural norms it creates, consistently advocates and upholds. Using a framework called the Total Professional to develop Outcomes that directly emphasize these significant qualities, institutions can design and align their key areas of study and learning experiences with those Outcomes and consistently incorporate them into the essential content and competences of any program.

OBE’s ‘First Principle’ is Clarity of Focus on Outcomes of Significance, and it’s key sub-principle is Alignment – that every component of the instructional system directly match, embody, and align with those Outcomes. It is here that most efforts at Implementing Authentic OBE fall short. Very simply: conventional systems of testing, grading, and assessing quality learning and performance are profoundly out of alignment with the Outcomes they attempt to ‘measure’ and record. This critical component addresses those many unrecognized weaknesses and offers sound methods for designing and implementing assessments that authentically assess and validate the quality and depth of student learning and performance.