Fostering Sustainable Quality Assurance Practices in Outcome-Based Education: Lessons Learned from ABET Accreditation Process of Computing Programs

Abstract

Education is an important enabler for economic uplift of a society and academic institutions need to deliver quality education to equip students with required skills to excel in their professional careers. Due to international initiatives such as Washington and Seoul accords, outcome-based education has gained significant interest from industry, academia, governments, accreditation bodies and students. Outcome-based education is a paradigm shift form conventional education approach and its successful adoption requires sustainable quality practices by higher education institutions. Fostering quality assurance processes for outcome-based education requires careful planning and active collaboration among stakeholders. However, due to the sparse body of knowledge about quality processes in outcome-based education, many academic institutions rely on ad hoc practices, resulting in a trial and error approach. In this paper, we present set of guidelines which can help academic institutions to deploy sustainable practices in their academic programs. We document important guidelines to deliver outcome-based education based on our longitudinal work of ABET accreditation process of three different computing programs (Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, and Cyber Security and Digital Forensics). The successful application of proposed guidelines helps to foster sustainable quality practices in academic programs.