OBE Ecosystem Approach to Future-Ready Education

The 9th AUN-EQI workshop on "OBE Ecosystem Approach to Future-Ready Education" was held on 28 - 31 October 2025 in Bangkok, Thailand. The workshop was a collaborative capacity building initiative between ASEAN Quality Network (AUN) and Education Quality International (eqi) and was attended by participants from universities in the Philippines.

The OBE Ecosystem Framework (Version 5) was developed to advance future-ready education and to prepare higher education instiutions to be future-ready in the world of disruptions. The following fundamental principles of OBE ecosystem framework were extensively discussed:

• WISER outcomes: outcomes: learning outcomes that are formulated based on the work of the future, vertical and horizontally aligned, significance and SMART, ecosystem perspective and real-world learning.
• Ecosystem curriculum design: The system to design future-ready curriculum requires both outside-in (ecosystem) and inside-out (microsystem) approaches with an emphasis on integrated curriculum best practices and designs.
• Real-world learning: learning should involve real world challenges and real-world tasks in bridging the gap between theory and practice gap so as to develop graduates’ work readiness by focusing on nurturing attributes towards employability and lifelong learning.
• Integrated constructive alignment: curriculum should embrace an integrated (vertical and horizontal) constructive alignment within and outside the programme and institution with the ecosystem.

Case studies were held to reinforce the underatnding and application of the OBE Ecosystem Framework.