Outcome-based education - The assessment of programme educational objectives for an engineering undergraduate degree

Outcome-based Education (OBE) emphasises on two main components in terms of student achievement in an academic programme. One is the Programme Outcomes (POs) which is measured at the point of graduation, and the other, the Programme Educational Objectives (PEOs) is assessed over a longer period of time (around 4-5 years) after graduation. This study focuses on the establishment of a systematic procedure adopted by the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) to formulate PEOs assessment criteria with integration of stakeholders' input, methodology for an unbiased measurement of graduates' long-term attainment rate, as well as analysis and identification of a set of strategies for continuous quality improvement (CQI). These PEOs are mapped using the guidelines set by the Engineering Council to those required by the Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC), Malaysia. The outcome of the mapping exercise was used to formulate an anonymous online questionnaire survey as a measure of the PEOs' attainment. Key outcomes from this study revealed that graduates are broadly satisfied with their achievement in all eight PEOs. Strategies were also proposed to improve the attainment level in four PEOs with relatively lower attainment rate, as part of the CQI process adopted in the department. © 2014 J. Davies, The Higher Education Academy.