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Tag: competency-based education

  • Competency-Based Education: Not just a drinking game

    Ray Henderson captured the changing trend of the past two EDUCAUSE conferences quite well.

    The drinking game: sure inebriation in 13 from vendor claims of “mooc” “cloud” or “disrupting edu”. In 2014: “competency based.”

    Two years ago, the best-known competency-based education (CBE) initiatives were at Western Governors University (WGU), Southern New Hampshire University’s College for America (CfA), and SUNY’s Excelsior College. In an article this past summer describing the US Department of Education’s focus on CBE, Paul Fain noted [emphasis added]:

    The U.S. Department of Education will give its blessing — and grant federal aid eligibility — to colleges’ experimentation with competency-based education and prior learning assessment.

    On Tuesday the department announced a new round of its “experimental sites” initiative, which waives certain rules for federal aid programs so institutions can test new approaches without losing their aid eligibility. Many colleges may ramp up their experiments with competency-based programs — and sources said more than 350 institutions currently offer or are seeking to create such degree tracks.

    One issue I’ve noticed, however, is that many schools are looking to duplicate the solution of CBE without understanding the the problems and context that allowed WGU, CfA and Excelsior to thrive. By looking at the three main CBE initiatives, it is important to note at least three lessons that are significant factors in their success to date, and these lessons are readily available but perhaps not well-understood.

    Lesson 1: CBE as means to address specific student population

    (more…)

  • Helix: View of an LMS designed for competency-based education

    Within higher education, we tend to talk about LMS solutions based on an institutional perspective – which systems can serve as the official LMS for an entire institution. While this view is important and forms the basis for my LMS graphics, the emergence of new educational delivery models has led to the development of some interesting program-specific LMS models. One example that I have already written about is 2U’s platform (built on top of Moodle and Adobe Connect) for their specific Online Service Provider (OSP) business.

    One educational model that is becoming more and more important is competency-based education (CBE). One of the challenges for this model is that the traditional LMS – based on a traditional model using grades, seat time and synchronous cohort of students – is not easily adapted to serve CBE needs. As described in this CBE primer:

    OBE [Outcome-based education] can be implemented in various modalities, including face-to-face, online and hybrid models.

    Competency-based education (CBE) is a narrower concept, a subset or instance of OBE, where the outcomes are more closely tied to job skills or employment needs, and the methods are typically self-paced. Again based on the Malan article, the six critical components of CBE are as follows:

    1. Explicit learning outcomes with respect to the required skills and concomitant proficiency (standards for assessment)
    2. A flexible time frame to master these skills
    3. A variety of instructional activities to facilitate learning
    4. Criterion-referenced testing of the required outcomes
    5. Certification based on demonstrated learning outcomes
    6. Adaptable programs to ensure optimum learner guidance

    (more…)

  • Gen Ed and Competency-Based Education

    Inside Higher Ed has a write-up today on an effort by the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) to develop a competency-based framework for general education called General Education Maps and Markers (GEMs), funded by a multi-million-dollar Gates Foundation grant. I am honored to report that I have been invited to participate on one of the GEMs committees.

    To be honest, I have mixed feelings about competency-based education (CBE). On the one hand, I do think that an earnest attempt to have a norming conversation and set some standards for what we hope students will learn at college is very important and badly overdue. On the other hand, it’s all too easy to apply CBE in a mechanistic and reductive way that ignores the important but hard-to-measure skills precisely because they’re hard to measure. It’s essentially the same worry that a number of readers expressed in the comments on my post about Pearson’s efficacy initiative. That said, AAC&U has a good shot at assembling the right stakeholders to grapple with this complexity appropriately. I do think there are models out there. For example, ASU’s Habitable Worlds class, which is both competency-based and mastery-based, is not at all dumbed down and could even be further expanded to include writing and similar open-ended analytic and communications skills. (I interviewed Habitable Worlds co-creator Ariel Anbar last year.) But there are many challenges.

    Anyway, the first meeting of the GEMs group is coming up in a couple of weeks. I’ll let you know what I think after spending a couple of days talking about the issues with the working group.

  • Notes from Paul LeBlanc keynote address at WCET13

    Two weeks ago I attended the WCET Conference in Denver. While much smaller than EDUCAUSE and some others, I find these conferences to be great learning experiences, especially as WCET supports open dialogue between academic leaders (provosts, deans, etc), academic IT and edtech support, and industry leaders. The combination of mindsets – especially the combination of academic and technology – leads to very strategic discussions.

    This year the keynote was presented by Dr. Paul LeBlanc, the president of Southern New Hampshire University, which has made quite a name for itself with the College for America (CfA) program. College for America is probably the second best-known example of competency-based education (CBE) after Western Governors University (WGU), and in fact the CfA program was the first to gain Department of Education approval using the “direct assessment” rule that completely avoids seat time. See my previous post for a primer on CBE.

    While you can see the entire keynote here (using the mediasite player), I wanted to highlight four key points that help illuminate the reality of competency-based education today. As CBE becomes more hotly debated, it is useful to have real examples to evaluate. I have very roughly paraphrased and taken notes on what I heard in the keynote on these points, not as a defense or endorsement of CfA, but as a real-world early example of CBE.

    1) Competency-based education is typically targeted at working adults (14:11 – 20:40)

    (more…)

  • Competency-Based Education: An (Updated) Primer for Today’s Online Market

    There has been a significant amount of progress and interest in competency-based education, as Wisconsin has launched its Flexible Option program, federal legislators are pushing the concept, ‘patient zero’ has graduated from College for America, and resistance is emerging to the concept. I thought it might be useful to update and re-share the primer that was originally posted in August, 2012.

    I’m not an expert in the academic theory and background of outcomes and competencies, so in this post I’ll summarize the key points from various articles as they relate to the current market for online programs. Links are included for those wanting to read in more depth.

    What is Competency-Based Education?

    SPT Malan wrote in a article from 2000 about the generally-accepted origins:

    Competency-based education was introduced in America towards the end of the 1960s in reaction to concerns that students are not taught the skills they require in life after school.

    Competency-based education (CBE) is based on the broader concept of Outcomes-based education (OBE), one that is familiar to many postsecondary institutions and one that forms the basis of many current instructional design methods. OBE works backwards within a course, starting with the desired outcomes (often defined through a learning objectives taxonomy) and relevant assessments, and then moving to the learning experiences that should lead students to the outcomes. Typically there is a desire to include flexible pathways for the student to achieve the outcomes.

    OBE can be implemented in various modalities, including face-to-face, online and hybrid models.

    Competency-based education (CBE) is a narrower concept, a subset or instance of OBE, where the outcomes are more closely tied to job skills or employment needs, and the methods are typically self-paced. Again based on the Malan article, the six critical components of CBE are as follows: (more…)

  • SUNY and the Expansion of Prior Learning Assessments

    Last week Steve Kolowich wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the State University of New York (SUNY) system approval of a plan that would target reduced time-to-degree.

    The State University of New York’s Board of Trustees on Tuesday endorsed an ambitious vision for how SUNY might use prior-learning assessment, competency-based programs, and massive open online courses to help students finish their degrees in less time, for less money.

    The plan calls for “new and expanded online programs” that “include options for time-shortened degree completion.” In particular, the board proposed a huge expansion the prior-learning assessment programs offered by SUNY’s Empire State College.

    Although the MOOC angle led the article’s title and online discussion, there was more significant news in terms of structural change regarding Prior Learning Assessments (PLA).

    Even before the SUNY announcement, it had already been a big week for nontraditional models for awarding college credit. The U.S. Education Department on Monday said it had no problem with spending federal student aid on college programs that give credit based on “competency,” not the number of hours students spend in class.

    Empire State College’s prior-learning assessment programs operate on a similar principle. Students who can demonstrate that they have acquired certain skills can get college credit, even if they did not acquire those skills in a college classroom.

    The new SUNY effort will aim to copy the Empire State model across the system, said Nancy L. Zimpher, the chancellor.

    “This resolution opens the door to assurances to our students that this kind of prior-learning assessment will be available eventually on all our campuses,” said Ms. Zimpher in an interview.

    (more…)

  • Competency-Based Education: A Primer for Today’s Online Market

    As I described in my most recent post, the competency-based movement is finally gaining momentum based on recent announcements. But what actually is “competency-based education” and why has it taken so long to expand beyond Western Governors University?

    I’m not an expert in the academic theory and background of outcomes and competencies, so in this post I’ll summarize the key points from various articles as they relate to the current market for online programs. Links are included for those wanting to read in more depth.

    What is Competency-Based Education?

    SPT Malan wrote in a article from 2000 about the generally-accepted origins:

    Competency-based education was introduced in America towards the end of the 1960s in reaction to concerns that students are not taught the skills they require in life after school.

    Competency-based education (CBE) is based on the broader concept of Outcomes-based education (OBE), one that is familiar to many postsecondary institutions and one that forms the basis of many current instructional design methods. (more…)