Quality Enhancement Cell Held 1st Consultative Session on CQI Cycle Implementation

QEC is vigorously working on improving the overall quality of academic programs being offered by implementing various IQA processes and international best practices. In this backdrop, QEC organized a 1st consultative session on CQI cycle implementation at Faculty of Health & Life Sciences (FoHLS) on Wednesday, October 26,2022 from 9AM to 11AM at Conference Room, F-Block (2nd – Floor). Twelve faculty members from the FoHLS participated in the consultative session. The resource person of the said session is Prof. Dr. Majid Ali from Civil Engineering Dept. who is a profound researcher, academician and quality practitioner. He is an active member of the Evaluation Team Member of PEC, for the accreditation of academic programs on the OBE system.

The objective of the consultative session is to orient the faculty members regarding the OBE system, its implementation in the CUST, CLOs, PLOs, and PEOs mapping. The session started with the recitation of Holy Quran after which Director QEC welcomed the participants and resource person. He acknowledged the cooperation & efforts of FoHLS and resource person for improving the quality of academic program by facilitating the process of the implementation of IQA standards. Director QEC briefed that Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) is one of the most effective tool for IQA of the academic program. As, it enables the departmental heads/faculty to identify the areas of improvement in the academic program.

He further apprised the participants that a series of consultative sessions would be organized by QEC for FoHLS, in order to build the capacity of faculty members related to the effective curriculum, CLOs, PLOs and PEOs development, necessary for nurturing the competent graduates as per the requirement of job market and industry and invited resource person to further continue the session. The resource person started the consultative session by providing a brief overview of the topics which will be discussed including OBE background, OBE design related to CUST Portal, and role of the instructor in designing and achieving the intended PLOs.

Dr. Majid Ali explained the difference between traditional and outcome-based education systems to the participants. He explicated that the traditional education system is teaching & content-centric and the output/graduate’s quality is based on measuring the student’s mastery of the defined body of disciplinary knowledge and their performance with the defined curriculum. Moreover, he explicated the OBE education system according to the school of thought defined by William Spady who is the father of OBE. The resource person briefed the participants related to Program Education Objectives (PEOs), Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs) and Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs), their link and to design them as per the requirement of CUST vision & mission, job market & industry’s requirement. He apprised them of the basic and important components of CLOs and PLOs which needs to consider while developing them along with the examples of poor, better and best CLOs.

Dr. Majid Ali explained the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy along with their higher-order and lower-order thinking level. He informed the participants that the role of the instructor is very important in developing the CLOs, PLOs and PEOs of the academic program and how to achieve the intended CLOs, PLOs throughout the degree program. It was a very interactive session where all the participants highly interacted with the resource person by asking their queries related to the subject. The session concluded with the assessment activity wherein, all participants are asked to evaluate the CLOs of the course cell biology and its mapping with PLOs in the light of the information provided of Bloom’s Taxonomy. After which, Director QEC appreciated the efforts of the participants for showing their keen interest during the workshop. He also showed his gratitude to the resource person for delivering such a thought-provoking session.