Enabling higher order thinking and technical communication — An Indian context for OBE

Much research into how people learn and skills required for professional competence has gone into designing curricula in higher education. Benjamin Bloom, Fink, Eric Mazur, Richard Felder and many others have much contributed to the design of aligned courses where outcomes, teaching and assessment complement each other resulting in effective learning. This is the basis of the international accreditation using outcome based education (OBE). Moreover, the Indian accreditation agency National Board of Accreditation (NBA) has adopted outcome based education for colleges seeking accreditation now. In this paper, we specifically describe the work in progress implementation of social constructive approaches such as eBridge and Talent Identification strategies in Nalla Malla Reddy Engineering College (NMREC) which is an affiliated engineering college of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), Hyderabad, India. These strategies aim at fulfilling all the graduate attributes according to Washington Accord. In the present paper, we propose to show the processes, the data and some outcomes of these initiatives. The measured outcomes have demonstrated the positive influences of social constructivism in skill development and employability of the students.