e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: excelsior college

  • 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

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  • Adaptive Learning Market Acceleration Program (ALMAP) Summer Meeting Notes

    I recently attended the ALMAP Summer Meeting. ALMAP is a program funded by the Gates Foundation, with the goals described in this RFP webinar presentation from March 2013:

    We believe that well implemented personalized & adaptive learning has the potential to dramatically improve student outcomes

    Our strategy to accelerate the adoption of Adaptive Learning in higher education is to invest in market change drivers… …resulting in strong, healthy market growth

    As the program is in its mid stage (without real results to speak of yet), I’ll summarize Tony Bates style with summary of program and some notes at the end. Consider this my more-than-140-character response to Glenda Morgan:

    Originally planned for 10 institutions, the Gates Foundation funded 14 separate grantees at a level of ~$100,000 each. The courses must run for 3 sequential semesters with greater than 500 students total (per school), and the program will take 24 months total (starting June 2013). The awards were given to the following schools:

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  • Competency-Based Online Education: The Rising Tide of College Affordability

    One of the interesting trends over the past year or two is the emergence of educational delivery models as a locus of innovation – with new business models, applications of technology, and tight integrations of educational content and delivery platforms. In part 1 of this series, I described a new landscape of educational delivery models. In part 2 I described the master course concept that is the basis for most scalable for-profit and not-for-profit online programs. In part 3 and part 4 I described the emergence of MOOCs as well as four barriers they must overcome to become self-sustaining. In this post, I’d like to focus on the less glamorous, but perhaps more significant, movement in self-paced and competency-based online education.

    Consider that just two years ago Western Governors University stood almost alone as the competency-based model for higher education, but today we can add Southern New Hampshire University, the University of Wisconsin System, Northern Arizona University, StraighterLine and Excelsior College.

    Let’s review some of the recent announcements of competency-based programs.

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