MAPPING GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES OF NBA WITH THE PROGRAM

OUTCOMES OF THE ABET / OBE TO ESTABLISH CONSISTENCY BETWEEN

THE TWO
B B Kotturshettar and A S Shettar
B V B College of Engineering & Technology, Vidyanagar, Hubli 580031, Karnataka, India
bbkshettar@gmail.com, ashoksshettar@gmail.com
The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) in India has come up with a new requirement in
its document published in January 2013 which is a complete overhaul of what it was a few
years ago. The expectations of NBA for an engineering educational institution are now driven
by graduate attributes the qualities that a graduating student has to demonstrate for having
possessed through the engineering education. The graduate attributes mentioned in the NBA
document are comparable with the more familiar Program Outcomes (POs) the term used in
Outcome Based Education (OBE) framework and also in the ABET document to measure the
attainment status of competence of professionals. The competence is also measured
subsequently through Program Educational Objectives (PEOs) after 3 to 5 years of graduation
which is beyond the present scope. Many engineering institutes in India have started work on
implementing OBE framework with program outcomes as the measure of attainment of
attributes expected of a graduating engineer. Such institutes are in an ambiguous state as to
how they can switch their processes to meeting the new NBA requirement of addressing
Graduate Attributes from the Program Outcomes that they have acquired familiarity with?
The paper shows how the graduate attributes can be mapped to POs in institutes offering
undergraduate engineering education so that one can continue with the established processes
of measuring the attainment status of program outcomes and also meet the requirements of
NBA.