M Haque
ABSTRACT
Outcome-based education (OBE) is neither a new concept nor a passing phase in educational technology and is equally applicable throughout the educational continuum from primary school to postgraduate training. OBE emphases on the finished product or output and defines what the learner is answerable for any teaching and learning program. OBE does not pronounce how to teach or how to learn for teachers and learners, respectively. OBE has been introduced to undergraduate medical education almost two decades ago; the method has been implemented in different medical institutes and in number of countries of both developing and developed nation. Professor Harden claimed long before that OBE is a sophisticated strategy for curriculum planning that offers several advantages. Professor Jim McKernan claims that OBE shrinks teaching and learning to methods of human engineering and quasi-scientific planning procedures and that education cannot be regarded as an instrumental means to an end. No single educational and instructional strategy is totally faultless, and many are clouded with contradictions, inferences, indecision, and masked agendas. Finally, OBE approach is based on sound educational principles and provides a robust framework for students to acquire the necessary fitness to practice particularly to rectify irrational prescribing and promoting rational prescribing.