Outcome-Based Education

Outcome-based education, or OBE, is an educational theory that organizes every part of an educational system around specified goals, or outcomes, so that by the end of the educational experience each student should have achieved them; it prescribes no single style of teaching or assessment, only that classes, opportunities and assessments all serve the stated outcomes. Australia and South Africa adopted OBE policies from the 1990s to the mid-2000s before abandoning them in the face of substantial community opposition, while the United States has run an OBE program since 1994, Hong Kong adopted an outcome-based approach for its universities in 2005, and Malaysia implemented OBE across its public school system in 2008. The 1989 Washington Accord, an international agreement to accept undergraduate engineering degrees earned under OBE methods, reflects the same movement at the level of professional accreditation.