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The Course clearly explains the essence and power of OBE’s future-focused approach to ‘Success for All Learners’ on transformational ‘Outcomes of Significance’. Its 21 Modules unfold in five coherent configurations of OBE concepts and their implementation, each building on and expanding the content and implications of previous material. Most run between 15 and 20 minutes and are accompanied with lots of supporting graphics, diagrams, frameworks, and tips.
The four Modules that constitute this initial Component clearly:
Describe what Outcome-Based Education is, isn’t, means, and implies Offer abundant examples of Outcome-Based learning models that societies rely on daily to survive and thrive Explain how and why so many educational approaches are mistakenly called ‘OBE’ Describe how OBE departs significantly from, changes, and improves ‘modern’ education Recommend how to gain maximum benefit from the substance, frameworks, and strategies that unfold in the remainder of the Course.
The four Modules are:
The four Modules in this Component document and explain the birth, infancy, and early stages of the OBE movement, which initially unfolded in the USA and Canada. These breakthroughs emanated from the pioneering theoretical and applied work of Professors John Carroll and Benjamin Bloom in the 1960’s. These Modules carefully describe and explain:
How the Carroll and Bloom frameworks challenged many deeply entrenched, disempowering features of conventional education
How their work was translated into OBE’s defining philosophy operational principles How those principles shaped a set of practices that induced major changes and improvements in all key aspects of instruction and assessment
How those improvements, in turn, greatly expanded what were called the ‘Conditions of Success’, which further elevated student learning success dramatically
Why limitations inherent in Bloom’s model were eventually discovered, which opened the door to OBE’s ultimate paradigm-shift: The defining of learning ‘Outcomes’!
The OBE Movement expanded significantly in North America for a decade before its key leaders recognized that their ideas about Outcomes were faulty and limiting. The four Modules in this Component describe and explain a literal revolution in educational thinking and practice took place because:
A short and precise definition of ‘Outcomes’ was developed, and it rocked (and still rocks) the world of educational improvement
The many key implications of that definition expose how limited and limiting conventional ideas and practices about curriculum, instruction, learning, assessment, and opportunity actually are Authentic OBE implementation can and should unfold very differently from typical practice because learning Outcomes deepen and extend far beyond the short-term time-blocks of individual courses and/or grade levels
The multi-dimensional definitions of ‘effectiveness’ and ‘significance’ imply much more than standard conventions allow.
The four Modules for this Component are:
These four Modules in this Component open a very wide doorway to, and explain:
The elements and dimensions of complex learning – the learning that translates directly into effective role performance in all aspects of life
Why OBE implementers who reached this level of understanding and development begin using a new word to describe a word that defined ‘making a difference in people’s lives after their schooling has ended’: Transformational
The major impact that Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence had on this Volatile, future-focused era in OBE’s evolution
How ‘Transformational Outcomes and OBE’ are embodied in multiple models, strategies, and frameworks that have withstood the test of time and have been adopted at all levels of education on multiple continents
Why, in the eyes of many, education only becomes ‘real’ and ‘relevant’ to people’s lives when it engages with and fosters the examples described in these four Modules:
This fifth Component of OBE’s Empowering Evolution took hold three decades ago when a major shift toward personal self-actualization and inner growth was taking place in Western cultures, and OBE responded to this energizing wave. Thus, this Component’s Modules explain:
How much the concept of ‘performance roles’ sparked a wave of attention and enthusiasm among educators, compelling them to focus on far more than children’s cognitive potentials and abilities
How a 1991 Outcomes template that focused on humans as role-performers in life was embraced widely on multiple continents and drew special attention to Self-Directed Learning as key to personal empowerment, life fulfillment, and inner growth
How OBE’s evolution reflects this global movement toward personal empowerment, which is propelling TOBE’s vision and frontier ever-further from its constraining required-curriculum roots
The five Modules in this final Component are: