Imparting technical skills through outcome based curriculum and case study assessments

Knowledge, skill and attitude are three necessary ingredients for the success of fresh graduates both in terms of learning and employability. It is important to identify suitable teaching methodology to impart transferable skills to the participants. Outcome based curricula and experiential learning pedagogies create positive influence among participants towards learning. In this paper, Java web development course is considered describing course level outcomes connected with company's entry level program level outcomes. Case studies are used as assessment instruments towards measuring the abilities of the participants aligned with expected skills from entry level developers specific to Java Technology stream. Two approaches are discussed where the first approach uses normal class room delivery and the second approach just-in-time and scenario based approach. In the former one the software engineering and java concepts are covered as factual knowledge components where as in the second approach, an attempt is made to integrate process knowledge components from software engineering together with Java technology concepts using business scenario as a vehicle. The performance of the participants with respect to their case study deliverables is compared with two approaches. These results highlight importance of an integrated approach towards curriculum design and adopting appropriate teaching, assessment instruments towards imparting technical skills.