Competency-based learning: a proven concept?


Washington, D.C. – After nearly two decades of operating as an experiment in competency-based learning, the accredited online university Western Governors University says it is now a “proof of concept” of an emerging type of higher education institution.

competency The claim was made by two WGU representatives speaking at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation’s annual conference during a session about competency-based education – a system of learning where student progress is not designed around semesters but around the mastering of concepts at a more personalized pace.

“WGU flips some aspects of higher education, and that’s really what competency-based learning is about,” said Sally Johnstone, vice president for academic advancement at the university. “We are trading the normal relationship between time and mastery.”

At traditional colleges and universities, a student works through material for the duration of a semester. At the end of the term, a student has either mastered enough material to pass a class, or failed.

This traditional model has been under intense scrutiny in online education circles.

There’s really no gray area, Johnstone said, and a student must repeat a course, even if she has already mastered fifty percent of it.

That can be discouraging for students, she said.

“We know from that different people learn things at different rates,” Johnstone said. “We also know that the same individual may learn different subjects at different rates. We can use competency-based education and online tools to accommodate that. We are no longer in a position where we have to ask all students to do the same thing at the same time at the same pacing.”

Competency-based education, while still not exactly mainstream, has found more acceptance in recent years.

WGU now has more than 40,000 students, and the university is working with colleges and universities in 11 different states to launch their own competency-based learning institutions. In August, similar programs at Southern New Hampshire University received a shout out from President Obama.

But when WGU was first created by 19 governors in 1997, it was a hard pill for many accrediting bodies to swallow.

Phillip Schmidt, associate provost for compliance and accreditation, recalled just how difficult it was to get WGU’s teaching college accredited 13 years ago. Schmidt is also that college’s dean.

When seeking accreditation just from the state of Utah, Schmidt was asked how students would participate in labs. He explained how the students would use labs sent directly to their homes, he said, but the accrediting board was incredulous, asking the university to prove the labs were as good as the physical campuses’ in the state.

Schmidt decided to tour as many Utah campus labs as possible, and said he found that many of them would be at home in the 1940s and 50s.

“I had to argue that our home-delivered labs of the highest possible quality were as good as these,” he said. “I was mesmerized by the whole experience.”

Schmidt argued that accrediting bodies should not base their decisions on comparisons between competency-based, usually online, programs and traditional universities.

 Instead, he said, they should ask three questions.

“Don’t ask us what percentage of our faculty have doctoral degrees, or to show you all the publications our faculty have generated,” Schmidt said. “Ask yourself: do the competencies make sense? Are you satisfied that the learning resources align with those competencies? And do you believe our assessments align with those competencies? That’s what you have to do.”

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