Outcome-Based Education Essay Example

psychomotor domains of learning, thus, facilitating better understanding and retention of the topics learned. As stated by Killen (2000), outcome-based learning is underpinned by three basic premises:  All students can learn and succeed, but not all in the same time or in the same way.

Successful learning promotes even more successful learning.  Schools (and teachers) control the conditions that determine whether or not students are successful at school learning. Spady and his colleagues identifies four organizing principles of OBE, namely:

1. clarity of focus;
2. designing back;
3. high expectation for all students; and
4. capability of the teachers to provide expanded opportunities to allow for achievement of outcomes in a variety of ways.

In clarity of focus, the learning outcomes - broad and specific ” must be clearly Identified for the students; and all teaching and learning activities must be aligned with these outcomes. In designing back, the curriculum content should flow clearly from the most general valued outcomes, to the related, ore specific outcomes, to class lesson activities. In high expectations for all students, it requires that successful and challenging learning experiences and achievement of high standards be part of learning for all students.

In the fourth principle, it is suggested that different learners may take different routes, and different amounts of time or different numbers of attempts, to achieve the same outcome. Moreover, visionary elements, proposed by Spady emphasized the need for educational leaders to engage in mpowerment thinking, visionary thinking and future-focused thinking that looks to the world as it should be in the future. Killen (2000) acknowledged the significance of using outcomes to guide instructional planning. He claimed that there are three major steps in an OBE

system.These steps includes: deciding on the outcomes that students are to achieve; deciding how to assist students to achieve those outcome and deciding how to determine when students have achieved the outcomes.

In addition, teaching strategies for OBE is said to vary in numerous ways. Whatever pproach to teaching will be used, it is important for educators to keep the following points in mind: * The main focus should be on learning rather than teaching Students cannot not learn when if they do not think * Thinking is facilitated and encouraged by the processes that were being used with the contents as well as by the content itself.The subject does not exist in isolation -educators should have to help students make links to other subject. * Educators have the main responsibility to help students learn how to learn. On the other hand, students also have responsibilities for learning in an OBE system. Cockburn suggest that "learners are responsible for their own learning and progress".

The principle acknowledges the fact that learning is ultimately a personal and an internal event. Students must be motivated if they are to learn.Killen (2000) summarized three main points in the importance of motivating: students need to know why they are learning whatever they are learning, they need to see some value in this learning, and they need to believe that they can be successful. Outcome-based education allows the students to learn independently at heir own pace, having an outcome to achieve at the end of the learning process. The teachers are merely facilitators of learning - guiding and assisting students to understand information and to transform it into their own personal knowledge.

Outcome-based

education, as a trend in the present curriculum, has its advantages and disadvantages. Mostly, students would benefit from this system. As stated by RashaEldeeb and NishaShatakumari (2013), OBE encourages self-directed learning and allow the students to have a meta-cognitive understanding of the educational program and their role in that process. It also helps students to become aware of what they should be learning, aware of what they are actually learning, and aware of the control that they have over their own learning (Killen, 2000). In contrast to its benefits, critics of OBE pointed out several disadvantages.

One is stated by RashaEldeeb and NishaShatakumari (2013) that OBE conflicts with the wonderful, unpredictable voyages of exploration that characterize learning through discovery and inquiry. Another is that it is too technical or mechanical or inflexible such that innovation and creativity of the teachers would be killed. Furthermore, it emphasizes minimum levels of achievement and thus encourages mediocrity. However, these can be met by OBE in the sense that teachers would be able to practice innovation and creativity in developing teaching strategies that would help the students achieve the outcomes.In terms of mediocrity, OBE emphasizes the principle of high expectations for all the students wherein the teacher must set the criteria for the outcomes.

It can be said that one of the major disadvantage of OBE is the burden to the teachers in terms of findings ways to help the students arrive at the desired outcomes. In onclusion, outcome based education upgrades the educational system in terms of student involvement in the learning process, and promotes higher level of functioning after the learning process.