C-OBE flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Outcome-Based Education

An education approach in which decisions about curriculum, instruction, and assessment are driven by the clear end outcomes students must demonstrate at the completion of their learning experience.

Clarity of focus

The OBE principle that teachers and learners must share a clear picture of the culminating outcomes and the criteria for demonstrating them before instruction begins.

Design down principle

The OBE principle that curriculum and instruction are designed backwards from the culminating exit outcomes, working down through programs, courses, and individual units.

Revised Bloom's Taxonomy

A 2001 revision by Anderson and Krathwohl ordering cognitive processes as Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create, crossed with factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge.

Miller's pyramid

A competence framework with four levels: Knows, Knows how, Shows how, and Does, moving from knowledge to observed and then independent performance in practice.

Mastery learning

Bloom's 1968 model holding the achievement standard fixed while allowing the time and support each learner needs, with corrective instruction after each formative check.

Program educational objectives

Broad statements describing the career and professional accomplishments expected of graduates three to five years after completing the program; they are not directly assessed in coursework.

Program learning outcomes

Specific, measurable statements of what students should know and be able to do at graduation; they are assessed directly through evidence collected in courses.

ABCD outcome format

A four-part template for writing an outcome: Audience (the learner), Behavior (an observable verb), Condition (the context or tools allowed), and Degree (the standard of acceptable performance).

SMART outcome criteria

A quality check requiring outcomes to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound so that evidence of attainment can be collected reliably.

Graduate attributes

The generic knowledge, skills, and values a program guarantees all graduates develop, often defined by accreditation frameworks such as the Washington Accord's twelve attributes.

Constructive alignment

Biggs's principle that intended learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks all target the same verbs and the same level of understanding.

Backward design

Wiggins and McTighe's three-stage planning sequence: identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, then plan learning experiences and instruction.

SOLO taxonomy

Biggs and Collis's five levels of observed learning quality: prestructural, unistructural, multistructural, relational, and extended abstract, used to judge the complexity of a response.

Alignment verb rule

A design rule requiring the verb used in an assessment task to match or exceed the cognitive level of the intended learning outcome it measures.

Authentic assessment

Assessment requiring students to perform realistic tasks in contexts resembling professional practice, typically judged with criterion-referenced rubrics rather than selected-response tests.

Formative assessment

Assessment conducted during learning to provide feedback that students and teachers can use to adjust their work before the final evaluation of achievement.

Criterion-referenced assessment

Assessment in which performance is judged against a fixed, pre-specified standard, so that any student who meets the criteria attains the stated outcome.

Content validity

The degree to which an instrument samples the intended domain, established by matching test items to a table of specifications covering all outcomes and topics.

Reliability

The consistency of scores across items, raters, and occasions; common estimates are Cronbach's alpha, test-retest, inter-rater, and split-half coefficients.

Difficulty index

The proportion of examinees answering an item correctly, computed as the number correct divided by the number taking the test; values near 0.50 discriminate best.

Discrimination index

The difference between high-scoring and low-scoring groups on an item, computed as upper-group proportion correct minus lower-group proportion correct; 0.20 or more is acceptable.

Curriculum map

A matrix with courses as rows and program outcomes as columns, recording where each outcome is introduced, reinforced, mastered, and assessed across the program.

I-R-M-A codes

Curriculum mapping symbols meaning Introduce the outcome, Reinforce it, Master it, and Assess it, marking the developmental progression across courses and year levels.

Vertical alignment

Coherence of outcomes across successive levels of a program, so skills introduced in one year are reinforced and extended later without gaps or duplication.

Active learning

Instructional methods in which learners process content by doing, discussing, or problem-solving rather than only listening, increasing the depth of the learning activity.

Learner support

Programs and services such as academic advising, tutoring, remediation, and mentoring that help students meet the stated program and course outcomes.

PDCA cycle

Deming's four-step improvement loop of Plan, Do, Check, and Act, used to structure continuous quality improvement in program and course delivery.

Self-assessment report

An institutional document prepared before an accreditation visit that presents evidence on how the program meets each criterion and identifies areas for improvement.

Washington Accord

An international agreement among engineering accreditation bodies recognizing substantial equivalence among accredited programs, defined by twelve graduate attributes.

Closing the loop

The documented step in which assessment results are analyzed, an improvement action is implemented, and later data are collected to verify the change worked.

Continuous quality improvement

A systematic cycle of setting standards, collecting evidence, analyzing gaps, and implementing changes that are then re-evaluated against the same standards.