Outcome Based Assessment of Engineering Programs for Achieving the Quality Assurance – A Case Study

In the dynamic world knowledge without skills is worthless. In earlier times the education program focused on imparting knowledge alone. But presently along with knowledge transfer, skills should be developed in graduates to meet the demands of technical profession and emerging job markets across the world. As a result the engineering education system was transformed from input - output model to outcome based education model. ABET, NBA, ENQA, and AAAC etc were some of the accreditation agencies established to monitor and implement quality in professional education. This paper outlined the procedure for the assessment and attainment of outcomes defined by National Board of Accreditation (NBA), the accreditation body of India. A case study of attainment of program outcome (PO) and program specific outcome (PSO) process was discussed for tier II under graduate engineering program in the country. A comparison of PO & PSO attainments among different programs in an institute was also presented in the paper. From the study it had seen that only few courses in an engineering program contributed in accomplishing professional competencies defined by NBA. Also, various engineering programs exhibited medium level of correlation with program outcomes and program specific outcomes.