摘要：In the past few decades, ‘outcome-based' has become a buzz word in the educationfield internationally.'Outcome-based' is about focusing on student learning outcomes.This notion has underpinned and driven educational initiatives of various scales at the cross-national, national, territory-wide, institutional, programme and classroom levels,and produced profound impact across the world.A review of the major contemporary‘outcome-based' initiatives shows that they are not limited to any set of standard processor procedures. Instead, ‘outcome-based’ initiatives can have different focuses andapproaches and they respectively draw upon relevant concepts and theories to underpinthem. It is noted that at the heart of these outcome-based initiatives, there is quality ofstudent learning with two faces of quality enhancement and quality assurance. Emphasison the latter is significantly increasing with a global trend of putting accountability as anagenda item for higher education. It is also recognised that outcome-based approaches tostudent learning, on the one hand, entail adopting appropriate instructional design at the course level, on the other, unavoidably involve system-level changes, such as making newpolicies for a paradigm shift in education from a focus on input to one on student learningoutcomes. Furthermore, international concern for the development of important genericgraduate attributes such as problem solving abilities and global outlook, which aredifficult to be developed and assessed within single subjects, necessitates that efforts gobeyond instructional design at the course level, and a whole-institution approach tosupporting the development and assessment of the broad performance capabilities isrequired.By synthesising the key elements identified from the major outcome-based theories andinitiatives, a 4-element model for an institutional approach to enhancing and assuringquality of student learning outcomes was formulated. Special reference has been made to Spady's Outcome-Based Education theory, particularly its concept of 'designing down' ata system level, Biggs' Constructive Alignment theory which provides guidelines forinstructional design at course level and the 'Assessment Movement' in the United Stateswhich promotes practices of evidence-based quality assurance and improvement. Thispresentation explains the conceptual framework of this 4-element model fer aninstitutional outcome-based approach to enhancing and assuring student learning.
