Measuring Course Attainment through Competencies and Performance Indicators: A case of Computer Lab Based Course

William Spady proposed Outcome Based Education (OBE) during the '90s to bring more focus to formal education. Moving from a teacher-centric approach to a learner-centric approach, aligning curriculum, teaching-learning activities, outcome-based assessment methods, and aiding the learner to exhibit higher-order thinking skills are the list of few best practices implemented through OBE. OBE is intended to help the learners to understand Knowledge, skills, and behavioral attributes that they can demonstrate at the end of the programs and provide overall guidelines to the teachers on the list of courses, concepts, teaching pedagogy, and assessment methods to follow and achieve the desired outcomes. Measuring the success of Implementing outcome-based education helps to improve the overall quality of the teaching-learning process. OBE is measured by measuring program educational objectives, program outcomes, and course outcomes which can be quantified through assessment methods. Mapping the course outcomes with program outcomes and program educational objectives is one of the major steps in measuring the OBE. As the program outcomes statements are written at a very generic level, in general, it would be difficult to map the course outcomes with the program outcomes. To simplify this process and as recommended by the AICTE Exam reform policy, the researchers in this article have introduced the concept of competency and attempted to link the course outcomes with the program outcome through competency and performance indicators. Framework and guidelines to measure the attainment of course outcomes through competency and performance indicators are discussed by illustrating a Practical-based course.