Using outcomes-based education as a strategy for improving the academic achievement of senior engineering students

摘要

The advent of outcomes based education (OBE) in South Africa during the 1990's has resulted in a wealth of written material on the subject ranging from textbooks to accredited articles to conference papers. The purpose of this paper is not to provide an in-depth discussion on what and why of OBE, but to present how its underling principles have been implemented into the practical assignments of a telecommunications module in an effort to improve academic achievement. This implementation is discussed from the point of pairing OBE with exit-level outcomes (ELO) specified by the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) which must be achieved by engineering students in Higher Education.