Outcome-based education should not focus on employability alone. It has to have a broader perspective, Sudhanshu Bhushan, Head, Department of Higher and Professional Education, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, said here on Friday at the inauguration of the two-day State-level workshop on Outcome Based Education.
“When outcome-based education is guided by the job factor alone, it becomes a short-term myopic view. In the process, the intrinsic value of education is lost. It becomes purely materialistic.”
The Association of Self-Financing Arts, Science and Management Colleges of Tamil Nadu (ASFASM) had organised the two-day event.
Outcome-based education should have a broader perspective of grooming students as good citizens and strengthening democracy. And, this would come only when teacher played an active role.
Mr. Bhushan also cautioned the participants about a very dangerous dichotomy that the outcome-based education could create: moving from teacher-centric learning to learning-centric learning.
“The teacher and learner – both need to be engaged. The former has to be an active agency of teaching, who has to deeply engage the learner by allowing space for questions, arguments and making the teaching-learning process lively.”
Trying to make a distinction between learning and knowing, he said while learning was gathering information, knowing was deeper, understanding of the information gathered.
Professor M.G. Sethuraman of Gandhigram Rural University said the days of joyous learning was gone and a paradigm shift had taken place in the recent years in education. “A distinction has emerged between what is taught and learnt. In the process, education has become a casualty.”
He urged the participants to seriously deliberate on the outcome-based education as it was something that seriously concerned the students.
Marmar Mukhopadhyay, Director, Educational Technology and Management Academy, Haryana, said though Tamil Nadu had a very high gross enrolment ratio among states, around 80 per cent engineers were unemployable. As the ratio went up, there arose the question what could the graduates do – the doing part was what was missing.
He said learning was not equal to teaching. While teaching could remain constant, learning could not, as not all students in a classroom performed in a uniform fashion.
Underscoring the importance of creating quality teachers, he said the governments could create new institutions of higher learning but they needed qualified teachers to man those institutions. The governments should not mean constructing classrooms to creating new institutions.
Ajeet Kumar Lal Mohan, Secretary, ASFASM, credited self-financing institutions for improving the gross enrolment ratio in the State. Earlier, R. Nithiyanndam, Treasurer, ASFASM, welcomed the gathering.
The Association's president A.M. Khaleel delivered the presidential address and Joint Secretary J. Bharathkumkar Jaghamani proposed the vote of thanks.