Learning For Professional Performance

Leading Edge Learning

A Roadmap to Outcomes Based Curriculum Design 1

This Document This document contains:

 Your Pre-Reading Questions, and,
 A questionnaire that helps you identify your current practices
If you have any questions about either the reading or the questionnaire
please address these, via email, to Prof. (Dr) Henk Eijkman at
leading.edge.learning@gmail.com

Pre-workshop reading
Instructions
Please read the article “The Foundations Of Outcomes Based Education” in
order to answer the questions on the next page.
Introduction to the article:
The article offers very good explanations of the foundations of OBE. This
gives you very important background information that helps you implement
OBE in your daily teaching practices.
As the introduction to the chapter states, “The value of curriculum theory
must not be underestimated because through it curriculum practices are
better understood. A broad perspective of the theoretical aspects of OBE is
therefore essential and are dealt with in this chapter.”
This article will therefore give you a sound knowledge of the foundational
principles and concepts that underpin the OBE approach we expect you to
implement in your everyday teaching practices.
The questions, below, point you to the essential aspects of OBE that will
help you make a sound transition from traditional to a transformational OBE
approach to teaching. These essential principles are universally valid. They
are therefore relevant to India as well, but how you translate these
principles into practice may vary somewhat depending on your local
situation.
Answering the questions
Keep the answers brief and to the point. Some may require maybe half a
page but others need only a sentence or two.
Be aware that some questions ask you to draw on information from various
pages.

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Questions According to the article:

1. How is a traditional or content-based approach to teaching different to
an OBE approach?
2. What does the shift to an OBE approach require?
3. What are the benefits of an OBE approach?
4. How would you define OBE?
5. What are the main purposes of OBE?
6. What are the basic assumptions and key principles upon which OBE is
based?
7. Identify and briefly describe the three forms of OBE, What do they have
in common and how do they differ? Which of the three forms is your
preferred option and why?
8. What are the characteristics of OBE?
9. What role do “outcomes” play in OBE?
10. Briefly describe ‘critical’, and ‘learning’ outcomes and indicate where
they are used?
11. What are the characteristics of assessment in OBE? How does it differ
from assessment in traditional education?

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Profile Questionnaire
Introduction
The pre-reading places the traditional and OBE approaches in stark contrast
to each other. However in real life these distinctions are not always so black
and white. For example some of you may already be using more “learner-
centred” OBE ways of teaching without necessarily knowing about OBE,
while in other aspects you might still be teaching in traditional ways.
It is therefore more realistic to place traditional and OBE approaches on a
continuum, from Traditional (T) on left to OBE (O) on right. This allows us to
place our own teaching practice anywhere on a scale from ‘T’ to ‘O’.
For example, let us take the traditional approach in which “learners are
passive” and the OBE approach in which “learners are active”. Rather than
being in one or the other, our teaching practices may tend towards one or
the other along that continuum. For instance you might decide your practice
places your learners here (X):
In my teaching, my students tend to be:
T O
Passive learners Active
learners

Your “Outcomes-Based Curriculum Practice Profile” questionnaire asks you

to identify honestly where your teaching fits along each criterion. This will
help you identify those practices in which you are already moving to an OBE
mindset. It also allows you to see where changes need to be made, what
may make those changes difficult, and how to deal with those obstacles.

My Outcomes-Based Curriculum Practice Profile

Below are a number of curriculum practice attributes that indicate the difference between traditional
and OBE approaches. Please reflect on each attribute and indicate, with a cross, where, on the
continuum your own teaching practice is generally located.

In my syllabus students are:

T O
Driven by exams Continuously
assessed

My syllabus is:
T O
Content-based & divided into subjects Content is integrated with real-life
relevance

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 Learning For Professional Performance
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In my syllabus:
T O
Content is placed in rigid time-frames Time frames are flexible linked to learner
needs

My syllabus:
T O
Is closed to external input Allows for
external input

Students experience my syllabus as:

T O
Set in stone & not negotiable Guides that allow for creativity &
innovation

In my classroom, learning and motivation:

T O
Is my responsibility Is responsibility of learners motivated by
feedback

In my classroom, my students are:

T O
Passive learners Active
learners

In my classroom, my students:
T O
Compete
Collaborate

In my classroom, my students experience:

T O
Mainly ‘chalk & talk’ A wide range of teaching
methods

My teaching focuses on:

T O

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Exams Learning for

performance

My teaching tends to encourage:

T O
Rote learning Critical thinking, action &
reflection

In my teaching the emphasis is on:

T O
What I want to achieve What learners will be able to
know & do
My strengths and challenges
In the table below:
1. Identify your three strongest OBE oriented practices- that is those closest to the right end of the
continuum.
2. Identify your greatest three challenges, that is those practices you may find most difficult to change
3. In each case, identify (a) obstacles to change and (b) what may help you make the shift to OBE

My strengths (in order of preference)

1

My challenges (most to least Obstacles to change What may support

difficult) change
1

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 Learning For Professional Performance
Leading Edge Learning

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