Most of the institutions in the country record students’ progress in the form of letter grades. But some are still continuing with the age-old method of awarding numerical marks. Although these methods have been in practice for fairly a long period of time, neither of them reflects the real potential of individual learners due to inherent limitations of assessment tools as well as recording and interpretation of assessment outcomes. They do not provide authentic answers to questions like what all a student knows, what does he or she understand, what all he or she can perform after successful completion of a three or four-year degree program? These are hard questions with no easy answers. Many efforts, nevertheless, have been made to minimize the inadequacies insofar as assessment of student’s potential is concerned but very little has been done at curriculum and syllabus levels to lessen the disparity of standards across institutions.
The fact of the matter is that no system of assessment of learners’ potential can ever be completely infallible. There are a plethora of factors that could influence the final outcomes, be it marks or grades. The most appropriate way is to minimize the error components that are associated with the pre-conduct, conduct, and post-conduct stages of assessment techniques. Subject-specific benchmarking of learning outcomes and their continuous and comprehensive assessment is emerging as an alternative technique that can provide more realistic answers to questions relating to knowing, understanding, and performing. It is precisely for this reason that benchmarking of learning outcomes is increasingly becoming more popular than the traditional approach of designing curriculum and prescribing syllabi that is in vogue for a while. This is the most opportune time to switch over to subject-specific benchmarking of learning outcomes especially when the new policy has unequivocally recommended the development of the National Higher Educational Qualification Framework (NHEQF).
The term benchmarking in education is borrowed from the industry where it has been widely used as a part of competitive strategies to make reasonable advantages across the whole of industry. Benchmarking has a long and interesting history. But it got institutionalized in the early seventies when Xerox company faced fierce competition from its rivals in Japan. It was during that period that Xerox went on a mission to outrank its rivals by improving operational efficiencies and cutting down the cost of its products. Since then the benchmarking has undergone numerous transformations primarily focusing on evidence-based best practices. In the mid-1980s, benchmarking experienced phenomenal growth and soon it became a quality control mechanism on a worldwide scale.
In the early nineties when benchmarking was seen as a mechanism for quality assurance and quality enhancement, some educational experts considered experimenting with it in higher education despite reservations from certain quarters. A group of experts was quite skeptical about its success in education. In fact, they were deeply pessimistic about its prospects in education. Their line of argument was that something that had succeeded in the industry might not necessarily work in education since both are distinctly different in their role and functions. But their scepticism proved to be unfounded. Benchmarking of learning outcomes acquired wider stakes in the university system. It was swiftly adopted by many universities in the western world and thereafter it gradually made inroads in many more universities across the globe. But somehow it has not gathered momentum in the Indian university system.
Once the idea of benchmarking took effect in the university system, it came into vogue in one form or the other. It is now widely used not only for benchmarking of learning outcomes but also for appraising the performance of individual members of the faculty as well as research groups across the departments and universities. Internal benchmarking is widely used to find out which department of the university is not performing well and what all that it requires to improve its performance within a certain period of time. Some universities are resorting to external benchmarking wherein they are comparing their performance on some key parameters with other universities to discover how have they been fairing on those key indicators compared to their counterparts. There are also universities which are collaboratively undertaking benchmarking exercise to avoid duplication of efforts, time, and resources.
Benchmarking is emerging as a means of making the comparison of performance with the end goal of setting up best practices. Apart from documenting the progress of individual students in a more authentic manner, benchmarking has got remarkable diagnostic value. It is considered a more realistic means of evaluating and documenting the performance of individual students as well as faculty and institutions. It ensures both continuity and comprehensiveness with a special focus on diagnostic aspects of evaluation. Thus it has an added advantage, for it can profitably be used for mid-course correction. Not only that, it can provide plausible answers to many of those open questions, relating to the extent of knowing, understanding, and performing, which remain unanswered in the present system of teaching and learning.
The role of benchmarking for quality and standards in higher education is increasingly being realized the world over. It facilitates comparability, mobility, employability, and promotes access to quality higher education. It is in this context that the development of the NHEQF is of paramount significance. Subject-specific benchmarks set out expectations about standards of degrees in a range of subject areas. These subject-specific quality standards provide a key to building an outcomes-based approach to curriculum development, the modality of its transaction, and the assessment of students for ensuring the best standards of teaching and learning. The process of benchmarking requires broader coverage of the subject seeking answers to questions wherein each question includes several topics which when covered provides a comprehensive assessment of the acquisition of different competencies and skills.
Universities need to adopt benchmarking as a tool to ensure parity of standards in learning outcomes as also to bring about qualitative improvement in their teaching and learning. Subject-specific benchmarking is a process wherein subject statements are written in the form of learning outcomes by subject specialists and retained for a specific time frame. It is a dynamic process which is why subject statements in the form of learning outcomes are considered as moving targets from the quality point of view. The greatest advantage of subject-specific benchmarking is that the learning outcomes keep changing with the advancement of knowledge leading to continual improvement in standards of teaching and learning. Interestingly, the subject statements in the form of learning outcomes might vary widely in terms of cognitive and non-cognitive operations across different domains of knowledge. They might also vary widely in terms of difficulty values and discrimination indices. However, in each discipline, the subject experts have to develop a matrix for benchmarking of learning outcomes which can lead to a better-defined focus on learning outcomes. In addition, it would also require detailed guidelines for the teachers itemizing different tasks to be performed by both teachers and students during the program. Once these two wheels of change are set in motion, it would lessen disparities in standards across institutions.
Benchmarking of subject-specific learning outcomes would require a clear-cut break up of all curricular, pedagogical, and assessment activities. More specifically, it would first require the introduction of the subject and the aim of studying the subject. Second, it requires detailing of the scope of the subject and specification of expected cognitive and non-cognitive learning outcomes. Third, it requires the listing of pedagogies and pedagogical supports needed for classroom processes, experiments, demonstrations, audio-video support, etc. Fourth, it requires mentioning of tasks to be performed by the students in the form of home assignments, project work, group activities, quizzes, etc. Fifth, it requires the specification of techniques and criteria to be employed for the assessment of students’ performance and documentation of levels of attainments in terms of threshold graduates, typical graduates, and outstanding graduates. If all the teachers and students across the institutions are going to adhere to these specifications then it would significantly reduce the disparities in standards of academic attainments both within and across the universities.
One of the biggest advantages of this exercise is that on the one hand, it lets every teacher know about his or her role and accountability and on the other, it alerts students about their obligations to earn a certificate, diploma, or a degree. The underlying assumptions in subject-specific benchmarking for quality and standards are that students must know why are they studying a particular subject, what is the philosophy of that subject, what subject specialists think is important for the students to learn, what points of view they tend to emphasize, what they feel the limitations and future of the subject are, how are they going to be assessed on multiple criteria and how their performance would be documented? It is the responsibility of the teachers to let all this knowledge pass to their students before the commencement of the program.
This exercise needs to be carried out by individual departments at the university level and made available to all the teachers teaching in the university as also across all the affiliated colleges if the university happens to be an affiliating university. It would bring about qualitative improvement in teaching and learning besides addressing the most pertinent issue of disparity of standards across departments and institutions.
Subject-specific benchmarking of learning outcomes is a necessity in a diverse system where parity of standards remains a major concern. It may, however, be naïve to presume that disparity of standards will cease to exist altogether with the use of benchmarking. But it can certainly narrow down the range of disparity that currently exists. The task can be accomplished by subject specialists who are good both in the subject and in pedagogy and assessment. Universities can make a beginning in one or two subjects in the form of a pilot project either individually or collaboratively. Once the benchmark matrix is finalized in a particular subject, it can be fine-tuned and used as a template for similar exercises in other subjects as well.
There is no denying that subject-specific benchmarking is going to play a very vital role in serving the dual purpose of improving the overall quality of teaching and learning. While on the one hand, it would substantially improve the quality of classroom processes, on the other it would significantly curtail the wide-spread disparity of academic standards across institutions. Subject-specific benchmarking thus should be at the top of the government’s policy agenda without which it will not be pushed into public discourse and onto the policy agenda of universities. This being a much-needed measure of reform should be implemented without any delay, and the sooner the better.
The writer is former Chairman, UGC. Views expressed are writer’s personal.