Teaching and Learning in Engineering (TALE)

Prof. N.J. Rao

Lecture - 06
Outcomes

Greetings and welcome to the Unit 6 of Module 1 of course TALE. In this unit we are going to
look at the nature of outcomes and out of the several outcomes we talk about, we are particularly
looking at what we call PEOs and PSOs.
(Refer Slide Time: 00:54)

In the previous unit U5, we looked at the nature of the accreditation process and how it provides
the framework for designing and conducting engineering programs. That is the advantage of
following an accreditation process identified by a national agency. There will always be some
misgivings or you will find some exceptional conditions under which the accreditation process
does not suit.

But, that will be the nature of any accreditation process anywhere in the world if you are trying
to create one accreditation process for one kind of programs namely for all engineering
programs. There will always be a few exceptions but that should not be the reason for giving
away or throwing away a national level accreditation process. And the accreditation process, the
core idea or core facet of that is closing the quality loop can lead to continuous improvement in
the quality of learning.

That means by trying to close the loop, any institution can keep on lifting itself by its own boot
straps to continuously improve the quality of learning. When quality of learning is improved we
expect the quality of placements will also improve.
(Refer Slide Time: 02:41)

Now, coming to this particular unit, the two outcomes that we look at or we consider are
understand the role and nature of Program Educational Objectives and program Specific
Outcomes in the design and conduct of engineering programs. And having understood the role
and the nature of this the second outcome is one should be able to write the PEOs and PSOs for
an engineering program.

What kind of statements that one need to write to represent the PEOs and PSOs of an
undergraduate program in engineering.
(Refer Slide Time: 03:27)
Now we spend a few minutes to review the our Outcome-Based Education. Fundamentally,
Outcome-Based Education shifts the focus from teaching to student learning. It is not that
student learning was not important but the focus earlier was teaching, the quality of teaching but
now the focus is quality of student learning. And what is an outcome? An outcome is what the
student is able to do at the end of a learning experience.

And any outcome that you identify should be observable and measureable. So the statements that
you have to make should satisfy this criteria of observability and measurability. Accreditation by
NBA assures the stakeholders and society at large that graduates of the accredited engineering
program have attained the required disciplinary and professional knowledge skills and attitudes.
That is what it assures the society at large.

The outcomes of an engineering program are considered at three levels. These are PEOs, POs,
and PSOs are at the same level and CO, Course Outcomes at the course level. So this is the
essence of OBE.
(Refer Slide Time: 05:07)
Coming to the levels of outcomes we talk about Program Educational Objectives. Let us briefly
spend some time with each type of outcome and then we will more specifically come to PEOs
and PSOs. PEOs are broad statements that describe the career and professional accomplishments
in four to five years after graduation. That means you are trying to visualize what kind of
activities your graduates will be doing or involved in let us say in four to five years after
graduation.

Of course, what they do will depend on what kind of experiences, where they are employed
during those 5 years, but can we capture the features of the type of activities we expect them to
be involved. Coming to the other one namely Program Outcomes, POs are statements that
describe what the student should be able to do at the time of graduation from actually any
engineering program.

That is the National Board Of Accreditation considers there are certain outcomes any graduate
engineer should attain, irrespective of the branch from which he is coming. So to that extent they
are normally identified by accrediting agencies like NBA or in the US context by ABET. They
are written in a language that every branch of engineering can relate itself to.
(Refer Slide Time: 07:01)
Now, coming to the next one, the program specific outcomes which we consider are at the same
level as program outcomes, PSOs are statements that describe what the graduate of a specific
engineering program should be able to do. Now all, let us say you take a mechanical engineering
program in several colleges. They do not have to be identical.

They can, one Mechanical Engineering program can differentiate itself from another
undergraduate mechanical engineering program. That is the nature of higher education. You can
differentiate yourself and the nature of outcomes from let us say that branch of mechanical
engineering I can write it in such a way I differentiate my program from similar programs
through my PSOs. Then come the course outcomes.

After all, much of the learning is done through a large number of core courses. In addition to
core courses, there are electives and also there are may be some projects and some
extracurricular or co-curricular activities. But the dominant part of any program, undergraduate
program are the number of courses that you have. So COs or course outcomes are statements that
describe what student should be able to do at the end of a course.

And in Indian context what happens in an autonomous institution, it is the instructor or at the
department, the department itself will identify the course outcomes. Because instructor may
change from semester to semester and if the system permits instructor himself can define at the
beginning of the semester what the course outcomes are. Such a thing happens with institutes
like NITs and IITs in India.

But in other cases you may have to follow the course outcomes as defined by the department
itself. In tier 2 institutions where institution is a non-autonomous institution in a university, then
the board of studies of the program of that university will identify the course outcomes and here
what happens is within the broad course outcomes that are already identified by boards of
studies, the instructor has some freedom to tweak the course outcomes given by the university.

That kind of freedom is permitted by National Board Of Accreditation when it looks at a

Now, roughly this is the once we come to the PEOs, this is the relationship. There is the mission
of the department which is already written. We assume that mission of the department is
expressed in terms of a two or three or four sometimes five statements. We are not talking about
how to write mission statements. And starting with the mission of the department and you
constitute a committee with representation from all stakeholders.
They include industry, alumni, faculty, graduating students and this committee will brainstorm
and together looking at the mission statement these two together will decide what the, we will try
to write what are the Program Educational Objectives. And here these program educational
objectives you may want to review let us say once in four years or once in five years whatever
period that you choose.

And when you are trying to review and modify again one has to go through the process of
stakeholders meeting together and deciding why should the existing PEOs be modified and after
brainstorming the committee prepares and shares it with the stakeholders and then
correspondingly you modify.

And these Program Educational Objectives we will presently see get related to mission through
the dependency of PEOs on the mission of the department is expressed through what is called
Mission-PEO matrix. The mechanics of preparing this Mission-PEO matrix while we see in a
limited extent in the presently but more elaborately when we come to the fourth module on
accreditation.
(Refer Slide Time: 12:40)

Now, what are Program Educational Objectives? As we mentioned, what the graduates of the
program are expected to achieve within four to five years of completing the program. These
statements can be abstract to some extent but must be smaller in number and must be achievable.
You cannot say a Civil Engineer will lead a project to define let us say one of the major dams in
the country within four to five years.

While it is desirable, I do not think any of the persons will grow to that stage. So it should be
anything that we write should be achievable. And as we said must follow from the vision and
mission of the department offering the program and follow an established process. This is most
important. You should write a document on what is the process that we are following and it
should be documented and actually follow the process.

So the number of PEOs, we limit it to anywhere from three to five. This is also required as by the
NBA. The attainment of PEOs should be measurable but one thing that happens as of now
because of the market conditions are the placement conditions NBA does not insist on closing
the loop around PEOs. They say you write PEOs and measure to what extent they are attained
and leave it at that.

For example that provide statistics whether the, if 80% of the mechanical engineers have shifted
to IT disciplines, but that is the way the market is. So we do not complain but you have to
acknowledge that they have left practically the mechanical engineering and went into some other
discipline. So at present NBA does not require closure of the PEO quality loop while an agency
like ABET in USA will also require the closure of the loop around PEOs.
(Refer Slide Time: 15:03)
As we said all stakeholders through their representatives should identify the PEOs and review
them periodically following a well-defined process. And the process for design and review of
PEOs should be defined and documented and minutes of the meetings held specifically to review
or write of the designated committee should be recorded. That NBA insists on this record of the
minutes as well as the process to be made available.

And these final statement should be shared with all stakeholders. Okay, that is the nature of
PEOs.
(Refer Slide Time: 15:46)
Let us look at, also look at some other features of PEO statements. First thing is PEO statement
should strongly correlate with mission statements. They should not, There should be tight
correlation. We will presently see this correlation can be seen through a matrix specifically
created for this. What are the key elements of PEO statements? One is professional success. That
means they are involved in professional activities related to that branch of engineering.

And as present day requires they are involved in lifelong learning. That means they are
continuously learning and some of them are likely to go for higher education or go into research
as well and whatever they are doing they are doing as per ethical professional practices and they
do have communication skills and they are team players. Some kind of proof will have to be
collected from your alumni to see that at least they are whatever they are presently working on
has these features in it.
(Refer Slide Time: 17:09)

Now getting into some sample PEOs, these are prepared by some group of faculty. It does not
mean these are the best and these are the ideal or these are bad or anything like that. Okay here
what are we trying to we need to write three to five, here the sample shows four and what is PEO
1? Engage in designing, manufacturing, testing, operating, and or maintaining systems in the
field of electrical and electronic engineering and allied engineering industries.
That means if you take your alumni from this branch at the end of four or five years, if you look
at what they are at that time doing, they are doing one or more of these activities. They are
manufacturing, testing, operating, or maintaining systems in the field of electrical and electronic
engineering and allied engineering industries because electrical and electronics are also involved,
are required in mechanical, civil, chemical all over the place.

But they are involved with electrical and electronic engineering systems. Second one, solve
problems of social relevance applying the knowledge of electrical and electronics engineering
and or pursue higher education and research. So by and large you are involved in solving socially
relevant problems in electrical and electronic engineering or we expect some of them go for
higher education or even involved in research.

And the third one, work effectively as individuals and as team members in multidisciplinary
projects. So they are working, interacting with what do you call engineers from, engineers or
non-engineers from other areas. So to that extent they are involved in multidisciplinary projects.
The fourth one is engage in lifelong learning, career enhancement and adopt to changing
professional and societal needs.

How do you collect this data, that we will see it in a later module but we must gather enough
information about what they are doing at present to say whether for example a specific
individual, to what extent he is associated with PEO2 let us say. It may be to a certain degree or
we define the level of involvement at three levels. We will presently identify those three levels.
As you can see, looking at the present activities of an engineer who graduated four to five years
earlier we will be able to say to what extent these PEOs are attained.
(Refer Slide Time: 20:31)
Now what do we want to call by PEO-mission matrix. Now mission statements can be two,
three, four as we said. Each statement can have several phrases in that. So identify, first thing is
identify the key elements of mission statements. They could be, if there are three mission
statements each mission statement has two to three. So you have a fairly large number of key
elements. You can call them as M1, M2, M3 and so on.

The matrix is between PEO statements and the elements of mission statements. That means you
create a matrix with PEO statements as the rows and key elements of the mission statements as
the columns. So you may have, if I have four PEOs as in the sample and if I have about 8
mission, the key elements of the mission statements, I have a 4 by 8 matrix. Then you look at
each cell in the matrix and you put a number.

Strength of mapping between PEO and the element of mission may be marked as - if it is
substantial, you mark it as 3. And if it is moderate, you will name it as 2. And then if it is slight,
1. If there is no correlation between a particular PEO statement and the key element of the
mission statement you can put a 0 or a dash. But whatever number that you choose, whether 3, 2,
or 1 you have to write a justification.

You cannot just write arbitrarily some strength and not write anything. You have to justify why
you chose 1, 2 or 3 in a particular cell. So you have 4 by 8 matrix. So you have 32 cells. For each
cell wherever you put this number 3, 2, 1 you have to give a you have to write a justification.
That is how the PEO statements, finalizing the PEO statements you have to go through this
process of clearly or rather making sure that PEOs are strongly correlated to the mission that you
have.

What may happen, from time to time depending on the change in technology, the department
may choose to slightly alter the mission even though the vision remains the same, my mission
gets altered a little bit. That means what are the specific activities that I want to do to go towards
the goal that we express through vision, the mission may get altered.

When the mission gets altered, you may want to, that is the time also to take a look at whether
same PEO statements are still I consider relevant and valid. If necessary, the committee that we
are talking about should work on it and review and modify. That is the role of PEOs.
(Refer Slide Time: 23:55)

Now coming to Program Specific Outcomes, PSOs represent what the student should be able to
do at the time of graduation. Unlike PEOs where we are looking at four to five years after
graduation, here PSOs represent what the student should be able to do at the time of graduation
from a specific program. So to that extent, there is specificity with respect to the program that
you are talking about.
They will be different for mechanical engineering, they will be different for civil engineering and
so on. And PSOs are program specific. One can write large number of them, but the National
Board Of Accreditation specifies there should be two to four in number and need to be defined
again following a well-documented process. The kind of process that we followed for writing
PEOs the same, similar kind of process should be followed by for writing PSOs as well.

You will not be reviewing PSOs ever so often. You may want to do it once in let us say one cycle
generally of a program is four years, so you may want to review them once in 4 years unless
there is some other urgency that requires to reword your PSOs in a lesser time period.
(Refer Slide Time: 25:22)

Now, coming to this POs and PSOs; NBA identifies the POs and here there is a committee
specifically created. The same committee can look at the other one as well, PEOs. This
committee will, the stakeholders interact and brainstorms with the committee will interact and
brainstorms with this and then decides and periodically reviews Program Specific Outcomes
which are two to four in number.

And now Program Outcomes and Program Specific Outcomes are at the same level and they get
related to PEOs through what you call PEO-PSO matrix and now this is a fairly large size matrix.
Let us assume I have four PEOs and there are 12 POs and let us assume there are three PSOs. So
12+3, 15 and PEO 4 it is a 4 by 15 matrix that you have to see. And why is the matrix important?
When I try to fill the matrix with the strength of correlation between these things what would
happen is, if some columns are empty, that means PEOs and POs and PSOs are not correlated.
You have to take a look at it whether you need to modify PEOs or whether you need to modify
PSOs. So that kind of access that matrix will act as a great feedback to the committee as well,
okay?
(Refer Slide Time: 27:09)

Now let us look at the structure of PSO statements. We want the PSO statement to start with one
or more action verbs. And the action verbs you can have multiple of them, should be followed by
clearly identified technical objects and if required by conditions under which the actions have to
be performed. We will see examples. And then what kind of action verbs do you want to use?

What do engineers do? They formulate problems, specify products and systems, conceive a plan
or conceive a product, design, plan, architect, build, implement, test, operate and so on or
sometimes they have to select a technology, select products from available range of products,
analyze, determine, estimate, calculate. These are some examples of action verbs that you can
use. We will look at more action verbs when we come to Course Outcomes.

But these are reasonably adequate number of action verbs that you can use in the context of
writing PSO statements.
(Refer Slide Time: 28:34)

Now here is a sample of PSOs of civil engineering. For example action verbs here are survey,
map and plan. These are the three action verbs. What are the technical objects? Layouts for
buildings, layouts for structures or layouts for alignments for canals and roads. So those are the
technical objects. For example in this statement we have not written, let us say any conditions
like you can say you can also put conditions using certain specified tools.

Like using the AutoCAD or some survey tool or MATLAB whatever you call it, you can also put
some conditions under that. Now second one, specify, design, supervise, test, and evaluate. These
are the action verbs. Foundations and superstructures for residences, public buildings, industries,
irrigation structure, powerhouses, highways, railways, airways, docks and harbors. Yes, this is a
long list. A particular program that means is emphasizing more on this aspect.

And in some other program, I may not include that many technical objects. Third one, analyze
water resource/resources, hydrological systems to estimate safe and assured withdrawals and
specify design and evaluate water conveyance systems, hydraulic machines and surge systems.
So the entire field of hydraulics is captured and specifically what you are planning to do to your
program is captured here.
And specify, select and formulate environmental engineering systems. So as you can see civil
engineering generally uses something like four to five specialties. And whether you can capture
but you cannot write more than four. So that is where a compromise is required in trying to write
the PSOs that truly represent the particular branch.
(Refer Slide Time: 31:02)

Now, what we have seen is, we have seen what are PSOs, PEOs and what are PSOs and how do
you write them and what are the conditions that need to be fulfilled in writing them. So we
consider or we ask you to write these assignment. Write two to five PEOs for a B.E. program in
your branch and similarly write two to four PSOs for a B.E. program in your branch. It looks like
this requirement is, does not fulfill the conditions that we have been emphasizing in writing
PEOs and PSOs.

So these assignment are proposed only to understand, to facilitate the understanding of the
nature of PEO, PSO statements. So you do an exercise at individual level. But in actuality, these
outputs of these assignment should never be considered as final. It should be remembered that
PEOs and PSOs are to be written by the specially designated committees as indicated following a
well-documented process. So they can be considered at first level.
At department level, a group of faculty can sit together and prepare these statements and present
it to the committee as the first version and the committee can debate/deliberate over that and
finalize the PEO statements and PSO statements.
(Refer Slide Time: 32:43)

And the program, we will be in the next unit U7 you will be looking at the Program Outcomes.
Program Outcomes are 12. We will not be able to address all the 12 outcomes in one unit. So in
the next unit we will try to understand the nature of what the NBA calls complex engineering
problems and we then we look at the first five POs and try to look at what kind of activities
facilitate addressing the first six outcomes of NBA. Thank you very much.