Assessment of Program Educational Objectives using Alumni Survey: The UMS experience

Abstract

Outcome Based Education (OBE) is as an educational process which is based on trying to achieve certain specified outcomes in terms of individual student learning. The OBE assessment includes three types of outcomes/objectives: the Course Outcomes (CO), the Program Outcomes (PO) and the Program Educational Objectives (PEO). The PEO is being assessed after three to five years of their graduation date and indicate the achievements of program graduates in their career and professional life after graduation. In this study, two sets of PEOs were used to survey two different groups of graduates; using the Likert's scale and achievement indicators respectively. The achievement indicators were developed by the program using stakeholders' inputs. It was found that the average Likert's point indicates a satisfactory level of achievement and the second survey showed that older batch closely matched the targeted PEO performance compared to the newer ones. In conclusion, while Likert-scale method produces favorable results, the real achievement may not be accurate due to its' dependency to the precise research question being asked, possible response bias and temporal right-censoring. On the other hand, the direct indicator-achievement method produces measurable and clear outcomes. The better performance of older batch may indicate a span of time trend where working experience plays important role in PEO achievement.