iOBE Workshop @ UPNM Engineering

We've successfully conducted a full-day workshop titled "Understanding and Using iOBE for the Preparation of Course and Programme Assessment Reports" at UPNM Engineering yesterday (Monday 19/5/2025). Many thanks to Assoc. Prof. Dr Ku Zarina (Academic Deputy Dean) and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rashdan (HoD for the Aviation Dept.) for the invitation and hosting of this workshop. Huge thanks to all the participants for being good sports throughout the entire full-day sessions.

This is the second iOBE session for the faculty members @ UPNM Engineering, with the practical aim for them to immediately apply iOBE on their course data. The workshop started with the theoretical session to cover the foundations of OBE assessment, the framework of the software, and the interpretation of results from the software.

In the afternoon, we ran the hands-on session where the lecturers trained by running the software on sample courses first, before moving on to run the software on their own courses, as well as aggregating data for several courses together. It was exciting to see that all of them successfully ran the software on their courses (within several seconds of running the software), and being able to see all their students' performance from many different angles that were not seen before.

We hope that this workshop opens up an opportunity for them to see the potentials of seeing into their course and programme data to a deeper level, with the outcomes of having meaningful data to "close the loop" in the CQI process. We wish them all the best for their upcoming preparation of the Course and Programme Assessment Reports.

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iOBE Software Version 7.0: Major Enhancements and New Features

I'm excited to announce the release of iOBE version 7.0, marking a significant upgrade from iOBE v6.2. This latest version leverages AI analysis, introduces substantial improvements in data visualization, data reporting, computational efficiency, and user experience, while maintaining full compatibility with older input files down to iOBE v6.1. The full version remains freely available to the public, especially for educational institutions seeking robust OBE solutions.

🔹 Key Enhancements in iOBE v7.0

1️⃣ Advanced Visualization and Interactive MATLAB Figures
iOBE now produces high-quality visual outputs as MATLAB figures, giving users enhanced interactivity and flexibility when working with their data. Users can:

✔ Zoom in/out and pan graphs for a closer inspection of data points.
✔ Move and reposition legend boxes for improved clarity.
✔ Resize and refine graph appearances dynamically before exporting them.
✔ Save figures in multiple formats, including PNG, JPEG, PDF, and vector formats (EPS, EMF, SVG), ensuring compatibility with different publishing and reporting needs.

📌 Additional Benefits of using MATLAB Figures

✔ Lossless resizing and scaling, especially useful when exporting figures for research papers, presentations, or reports.
✔ Custom modifications, such as changing axis labels, gridlines, or line styles, even after the figure is generated.
✔ Multi-window support, allowing users to compare multiple datasets simultaneously.

2️⃣ Improved Data Export to Excel
Users can now easily access and analyze iOBE-generated data, which is automatically saved in Excel files. These include:

✔ Student outcomes data at the course, multi-course, and program levels.
✔ Statistical data from box plots (median, quartiles, outliers).
✔ Population distribution data, capturing performance trends at both the course and program levels.

This enhancement allows users to customize their own analysis, integrate data into reports, and use AI tools for deeper insights.

3️⃣ Enhanced User Experience & Front-End Processing
To further streamline workflow and usability, the following upgrades have been implemented:

✔ Improved progress bar tracking: Users now receive detailed updates on the computation stages during software execution, giving them a clearer picture of ongoing processes.

✔ Reduced screen clutter: Data tables are now written directly into Excel files, eliminating unnecessary on-screen outputs and improving processing speed.

✔ Optimized computational processing: The back-end algorithm refinements enhance data processing speed and efficiency, ensuring faster computations and smoother operation.

4️⃣ AI-Assisted Data Analysis Capability
A key enhancement in this version is the ability to leverage AI tools like ChatGPT 4o to perform in-depth analysis of the output files generated by iOBE.

🔹 AI-Driven Insights: The Excel files and visualization charts produced by iOBE contain a substantial amount of computed data. These files can be fed into AI tools like ChatGPT for detailed technical analysis using pattern recognition, statistical analysis, and advanced data analytics.

🔹 Enhanced Decision-Making & CQI: By analyzing iOBE-generated data with AI, educators can gain deeper insights into student performance trends, statistical distributions, and program outcomes. This facilitates better decision-making for Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) in academic programs.

📌 Important Note: iOBE does not have built-in AI integration. However, its structured output files (Excel + graphs) are compact with detailed information and easily analyzable by AI tools, allowing users to extract more insights beyond what the software presents directly.

5️⃣ User-Friendly Design
While introducing powerful new capabilities, iOBE version 7.0 continues to prioritize ease of use with a streamlined and intuitive interface:

✔ Single-Click Operations – The software features a compact (and the one and only) control panel that users interact with to execute functions with a single click, making data processing effortless. (Shown below is the actual iOBE panel on a full desktop screen, against the background of a self-captured Kinabalu sunrise.)

✔ Simple Input Files – iOBE is designed to work with straightforward input files, ensuring that users can operate the software with minimal setup.

✔ Offline Functionality – iOBE remains an offline tool, providing full data security and privacy, eliminating concerns about exposure to online threats or cloud dependencies, or slow server issues that can impact performance and accessibility.

✔ Comprehensive Documentation – The software is supported by detailed documentation, ensuring that users can easily understand its features, troubleshoot issues, and maximize its capabilities.

📌 Designed for Efficiency: These features make iOBE accessible to all users, from individual educators to institutional decision-makers, without requiring extensive training or technical expertise.

🖥️ Software Availability and Requirements

📌 The Download Links:

1. iOBE Software Version 7.0
2. MATLAB Runtime Compiler R2024b (24.2) for 64-bit Windows
3. Software Manual v7.0
4. Other Documentations

🖥️ System Requirements:

1. Built using MATLAB R2024b (64-bit Windows OS).
2. Requires the MATLAB R2024b compiler (included in the download link above).
3. Can also run on Apple computers but requires a 64-bit Windows OS environment installed first.

🎯 Who Can Benefit from iOBE?
iOBE is designed to support Outcome-Based Education (OBE) assessment at tertiary institutions, but can also be easily adapted for primary and secondary education levels.

✔ Lecturers and teachers can use iOBE for immediate insights into their students’ performance.
✔ Departments and institutions can integrate iOBE into their academic quality assurance processes.
✔ Education researchers can analyze trends in student achievement over time using iOBE’s robust statistical features.

📩 Contact for Training & Support
If your department or institution is interested in implementing iOBE and requires further explanation or training on its effective use for academic programs, please feel free to contact me here.

🔹 Summary of What’s New in iOBE v7.0

✅ New MATLAB interactive figures for refined data visualization & export.
✅ Excel data export for student outcomes, statistics, and performance trends.
✅ Improved front-end processing with detailed progress updates.
✅ More efficient computational algorithms for faster performance.
✅ Full compatibility with older input files (iOBE v6.1+).
✅ AI-assisted analysis compatibility, allowing iOBE data to be analyzed with AI.

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Online iOBE Seminar @ UPNM Engineering Faculty

An online seminar titled "Implementing iOBE for the Preparation of Self-Assessment Reports (SAR)" was conducted on 12/3/2025 to the group of HoDs at the UPNM Engineering Faculty, for them to evaluate the suitability of the iOBE software in their outcomes assessment and CQI processes.

This session introduced and demonstrated, for the first time, the newly upgraded version of the software - iOBE v7.0 - with enhanced visualization graphics using box plots, new color schemes for easier interpretations on population distribution charts, and extended data computations easily accessible through Excel files.

Many thanks to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rashdan (Aeronautics HoD) for initiating this session and to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ku Zarina (Academic Deputy Dean) for organizing and hosting this seminar.

Inshaa Allah, we will follow up soon with a live workshop @UPNM for a more detailed presentation and demonstration of the software.

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Introduction

The Integrated OBE Software, or iOBE, is an award-winning software that provides applications relevant to tertiary academic programs to address the requirements of implementing Outcome-Based Education in Malaysia as well as other countries. The full version of the software is released as a free software for all academic institutions and can be downloaded here.

The OBE Framework has been fully adopted by all engineering programs in Malaysia since 2009 through the Washington Accord, an international agreement that mutually recognizes the quality of engineering graduates from member countries. Compliance with this Accord requires engineering programs in Malaysia, through their accreditation exercises with the national Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC), to assess students' learning outcomes more rigorously.

Non-engineering academic programs in Malaysia are bounded by OBE as well through their accreditation with the Malaysian Qualification Agency (MQA). As such, engineering and non-engineering academic programs in Malaysia must develop dedicated systems to manage and automate the processes of computing and integrating assessment data on different outcomes from multiple courses. The iOBE software is designed to meet these needs.

The software is designed to be very easy to use (with single-button clicks), computationally fast (within seconds to a few minutes), flexible in managing data, and robust in its mathematical formulations. It runs as a standalone offline software, eliminating online-related issues such as slow servers and data security breach. The image below shows the one and only windows panel that the user needs to interact with when using iOBE.

Readers can browse through the following links to know more about the iOBE software:

1. Downloadable iOBE software, with a number of major upgrades since its first release in July 2015.
2. Software documentation, consisting of academic articles and software manuals. The documentation describes its mathematical framework, software architecture, and case studies on software implementation.

The software developer can be contacted here for further inquiries and for request to conduct workshops on OBE and the iOBE software.

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iOBE Workshop @ Physics USM

An iOBE workshop titled "Automating PO Calculation & Implementing CQI" was conducted this morning, Thursday 16/3/2023, for all the lecturers at the School of Physics USM. This is the second iOBE workshop conducted there; the first one was in 13 October 2017. This time, the need to have an automated system to compute PO attainments has become more urgent due to the requirement from the accreditation exercise.

This session briefly recapped the essence of OBE assessment from the previous workshop. Afterward, the session focused on presenting and discussing on the techniques of computing and interpreting the output plots produced by iOBE at the course and program levels. The CQI process was briefly discussed near the end of the workshop. A few Physics lecturers were able to download the software and successfully run it with real data from their own courses, which took only a few minutes to prepare the input file and a few seconds to run.

Many thanks to the Dean, Prof. Dr. Abdul Razak, for this invitation, and to the Academic Management Team lead by the Academic Deputy Dean, Associate Professor Dr. Iskandar, for hosting this workshop. Special thanks go to Dr. Husni for successfully running the data for his course in-situ and sharing the outcomes produced by the iOBE software during the workshop. Many thanks also to those who ask questions that provided fruitful and deeper insights into our discussions.

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