When I first joined Monash University, I had no idea what OBE meant, and how important it was. Second day at work, and I had to undergo the gruelling EAC accreditation interview, which I was totally clueless about.
Nonetheless, being more than a year at Monash now, the understanding of OBE or Outcome Based Education is now clearer to me..having attended a training on OBE (as well as countless number of meetings), I am now not only more familiar with this term, but can also apply this to my units taught.
The full day training attended which was organised by the Institute of Engineers Malaysia, involved mainly on OBE fundamentals, definitions and how to set the exam papers to meet the learning outcomes of the unit. The speaker also showcased the creativity and dedication of university lecturers who have demonstrated excellence in their teaching endeavours.
Although this was a full-day training, the speaker was capable of holding our concentration span throughout the day with his teaching approaches, which included having breaks in between lectures, providing videos and pictures as well as discussion among participants. This is a main issue in today's higher education teaching. Students are easily distracted, especially in long hour classes which therefore requires a high level of creativity and innovation in educators' teaching today. Due to the nature and importance of the training, the number of participants were also considerably high. This is another issue in today's higher education teaching which sees a large number of students in one class. When the number of students is large, the variability in students' learning styles also vary highly. Again, we see that a high level of innovation in teaching is required in order to capture the numerous learning styles.
