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Sasha Thackaberry

http://www.sinclair.edu/online/accelerate/ - 0 views

www.sinclair.edu/...accelerate

competency competency-based degrees college Sinclair Community Self-paced

shared by Sasha Thackaberry on 23 May 14 - No Cached
  • Sasha Thackaberry on 23 May 14
     
    Sinclair's new Accelerate IT programs are self-paced and competency-baced.
Sasha Thackaberry

Competency-based online program at Kentucky's community colleges @insidehighered - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...m-kentuckys-community-colleges

online program kentucky community colleges competency-based elearning

shared by Sasha Thackaberry on 10 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Sometimes potentially “disruptive” approaches to higher education arrive on campuses with little fanfare. And they can become solid additions to traditional colleges rather than an existential threat. Take Kentucky’s two-year college system, which three years ago began an online offering aimed at working adults. The project, dubbed “Learn on Demand,” hits most of the buzzwords du jour, featuring modular courses that lead to stackable credentials, with both self-paced and competency-based elements. All that’s missing is a MOOC.
  • Roughly 1,000 students are enrolled in Learn on Demand at any one time, according to officials at the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. Many heard about it by word of mouth, and a growing number of the system’s 33,000 online students have been attracted to the convenience of the classes, which can be broken into modules that take as little as three weeks to complete.
  • On-campus students have also begun “plugging their schedules” with the courses, says Jay Box, the system’s chancellor.
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  • “There was still an audience that we were missing, and that was working adults,” Box says. The problem was one of scheduling, because many “could not commit to a traditional semester.”
  • Under Learn on Demand, students can enroll whenever they want. There are no class schedules or assignment deadlines in the self-paced courses. And students can leave without facing problems when they re-enroll. As Box says, with modular courses, students have “exit points along the way.”
  • The program offers full, 15-week courses as well as ones that are broken into three or more “bite sized” pieces. Faculty course developers “determine the most logical competencies or learning outcomes to group together in a module,” Box says. Some of those modules come with a credit hour. Some don’t, and offer fractional credit. But all of them build toward a certificate or associate degree, including ones in business administration, information technology and nursing.
  • Each module is worth a half-credit, and the course is pay-as-you go, like other modular classes. Tuition is a flat $140 per credit. So in the management course, that’s $67.50 per module. With additional fees, such as charges for e-texts, the course’s modules range from $88 to $105, which is fairly standard across the program. So students can expect to drop no more than a c-note per credit.
  • The project also attempts to make remedial education more efficient.
  • The project, however, includes a college readiness course which enables a student to test out of individual modules -- breaking down their remedial requirements into small pieces. “A typical developmental education student who might test into the highest level of developmental math and would normally have to take a 16-week long course to get the credit for the course,” Box said via e-mail, “might only have to be enrolled through Learn on Demand in one three-week module.”
  • Faculty members at Kentucky’s two-year colleges studied the Western Governors model when they were building their new online program, officials said. They also took a long look at the University of Phoenix, mostly to try to duplicate how the for-profit runs its online programs all day, every day, with instructors and student services always on-call. Rio Salado College, an online two-year institution that is part of Arizona's Maricopa Community College System, also served as an example.
  • For example, the University of Wisconsin System and Northern Arizona University this year announced new degree programs with heavy competency elements. And Western Governors, a nonprofit, online institution that offers bachelor's and graduate degrees, keeps expanding.
anonymous

An "All You Can Eat" College Degree Could Be The Future Of Higher Education | Co.Exist ... - 0 views

www.fastcoexist.com/...the-future-of-higher-education

PLA Flexdegree

shared by anonymous on 24 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The model is fundamentally different, however, than any other adult bachelor programs that you’ve heard of. Students will pay a flat subscription fee of $2,250 for three month’s of “all you can eat” access. During that time. they’ll be able to use the school’s instructional content online, its advisors, and other resources. More importantly, they’ll be welcome to try to pass as many “competency tests” as they want.
  • “We are in essence creating a virtual university--a new one,” says Ray Cross, Chancellor of UW Colleges and UW-Extension. “What is a full-time student in a self-paced competency-based model? Well, we’ve got to define that.”
  • Only 10 students will be accepted for each degree program in January 2014, but as the program expands, Cross says the “sky is the limit,” especially given how many students are open to self-taught online courses around the world.
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  • The Lumina Foundation just awarded the university a $1.25 million grant to evaluate the program and document its creation so that it can be replicated at other schools.
  • For public universities, new ways of thinking about fundamental business models are becoming a necessity. “Our reliance on state funding is shrinking, and that’s true in every state that I'm aware of,” says Cross. “But it’s increasingly difficult for students to afford higher education costs at all levels. That is not a sustainable trend. It just is not. We need to seek alternatives.”
  • anonymous on 24 Oct 13
     
    Description of Wisconsin's "Flex Degrees."  Pay $2,250 for three months and learn and test as much as you want.
Sasha Thackaberry

7 competency-based higher ed programs to keep an eye on | Education Dive - 0 views

www.educationdive.com/...328382

higher higher ed programs keep eye competency-based competency

shared by Sasha Thackaberry on 04 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • ompetency-based education, also known as direct assessment learning, is a sometimes-controversial model that has gained ground in recent months.
  • Advocates say competency-based ed puts the focus on students’ capabilities rather than how many hours per week they spend in the classroom. The benefit for employers, they say, is that prospective employees can be judged more easily, based on their demonstrated competencies rather than guessing how their grades will translate to real-world work. By
  • In September, an audit by the department’s Office of Inspector General found that the department was not adequately addressing the risks posed by competency-based/direct assessment programs, increasing the likelihood that schools would create programs that didn’t meet criteria to receive Title IV federal financial aid.
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  • One risk, according to the auditor, was that colleges and universities would create programs that were just correspondence courses, without any meaningful interaction between students and faculty. Another risk was that students might receive Title IV federal funding for their life experience, without using the school’s learning resources.
  • The University of Michigan
  • the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, had approved the school’s first competency-based degree program: a master's of health professions. The distance learning program is aimed at working professionals in medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, and social work.
  • The program doesn’t have traditional campus-based classes — its students interact with mentors by phone, email, video chat, or, for students and mentors near each other, in person.
  • The University of Wisconsin System
  • The Flexible Option program at University of Wisconsin System offers five competency-based online certificates and degrees, targeting adult students with college credits but no degrees.
  • Wisconsin won approval from the Education Department and an accreditor for its self-paced, direct assessment arts and sciences associate’s degree.
  • Purdue University
  • The program is “transdisciplinary” — open to students in any discipline — with a theme-based organization and learning driven by problem-solving instead of how much time is spent in the classroom.
  • students receive credit based on learned and demonstrated competencies.
  • Western Governors University
  • Western charges a flat-rate tuition for every six months of enrollment, and students’ advancement is based on what they can prove they know
  • The 2-year-old program has partnered with 55 employers to create programs for job-specific skills. College for America claims to be the only program of its kind to be approved by a regional accrediting agency and by the Department of Education for Title IV federal financial aid, although the Education Department says there is one other.
  • Southern New Hampshire University
  • Capella University
  • The university allows students to receive credit for knowledge already gained through their experience with a “prior learning assessment.” As of Jan. 23, Capella and Southern New Hampshire had the only two programs approved by the Department of Education to receive Title IV financial aid, according to the department.
  • Northern Arizona University
  • Northern Arizona University offers a competency-based online learning program, called Personalized Learning, that allows students to use their previous experience to pass pretests and opt out of certain lessons.
  • is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
Sasha Thackaberry

The MOOC Is Dead! Long Live Open Learning! » DIY U - 0 views

diyubook.com/...s-dead-long-live-open-learning

learning diy MOOC opensource open educational resources opencourseware

shared by Sasha Thackaberry on 18 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The MOOC Is Dead! Long Live Open Learning!
  • We’re at a curious point in the hype cycle of educational innovation, where the hottest concept of the past year–Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs–is simultaneously being discovered by the mainstream media, even as the education-focused press is declaring them dead
  • Can MOOCs really be growing and dying at the same time?
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  • The best way to resolve these contradictory signals is probably to accept that the MOOC, itself still an evolving innovation, is little more than a rhetorical catchall for a set of anxieties around teaching, learning, funding and connecting higher education to the digital world.
  • This is a moment of cultural transition
  • Access to higher education is strained. The prices just keep rising.
  • Yet, partnerships between MOOC platforms and public institutions like SUNY and the University of California to create self-paced blended courses and multiple paths to degrees look like a sensible next step for the MOOC, but they are far from that revolutionary future.
  • projects to transform higher education in a direction that is connected and creative, is open as in open content and open as in open access, that is participatory, that takes advantage of some of the forms and practices that the MOOC also does but is not beholden to the narrow mainstream MOOC format (referring instead to some of the earlier iterations of student-created, distributed MOOCscreated by Dave Cormier, George Siemens, Stephen Downes and others.)
Sasha Thackaberry

Competency-based education gets a boost from the Education Department @insidehighered - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...ets-boost-education-department

education department gets competency-based financial aid

shared by Sasha Thackaberry on 10 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • the federal program could help lay the groundwork for regulation and legislation that is better-suited to competency-based learning.
  • Supporters of competency-based education called the experimental sites announcement a big win.
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  • “The department recognizes that this is new territory and they don't have a regulatory framework for it,” said Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University.
  • Colleges have faced plenty of red tape as they seek to give competency-based education a try. That is particularly true for “direct assessment” programs, the most aggressive version, which does not rely on the traditional credit hour standard.
  • Only two institutions -- College for America, a subsidiary of Southern New Hampshire, and Capella University -- have been successful in the lengthy process of getting the department and regional accrediting agencies to approve direct assessment programs. Other institutions have tried and either were rebuffed by the feds or are still waiting for the final word.
  • For example, the University of Wisconsin-Extension last year created ambitious direct assessment degree tracks. But the university has had to cover for the absence of federal aid for its “Flex Program” by spending more on grants for students. Officials with the system said Tuesday they were eager to participate in the experimental sites program.
  • Clearing the Way
  • The latest round of experimental sites grew out of a request for ideas the department issued last year. Many colleges sent in suggestions.
  • Mitchell drew rave reviews from several participants in the Washington, D.C., meeting of the Lumina Foundation-funded group, which is called the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN).
  • Jim Selbe is a special assistant to the chancellor of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, which is a pioneer in competency-based programs in the two-year sector.
  • Experimental site status would give the Kentucky system the ability to “be broader and have more flexibility,” said Selbe. “This is going to give us a chance to really go field test.”
  • For example, Selbe said, the system is considering new programs that would charge students a monthly fee for all they can learn. This subscription-style approach could also apply to four-month terms.
  • A move by the Kentucky system to try subscriptions is “impossible right now” under federal aid rules, said Selbe. But experimental sites could open the door to monthly aid disbursements, saving students time and money. “This will give us a boost to go forward.”
  • The department said it is seeking experiments in four areas. They should increase academic quality and reduce costs, the feds have said. And the announcement said the department would conduct evaluations of the selected programs, to test their effectiveness
  • The four targeted areas include self-paced competency-based programs, such as direct assessment degree tracks. Colleges can also test “hybrid” programs, which combine elements of direct assessment and credit-hour-based coursework. That version is currently not allowed under federal rules.
  • The new experimental sites will also include prior-learning assessment
  • Finally, the program will test federal work-study programs under which college students mentor high school students in college readiness, student aid, career counseling and financial literacy
  • Experimental sites programs have rarely been so promising, said Amy Laitinen, deputy director of the New America Foundation's higher education program and a former official at the department and White House.
  • “We don't have to wait for a reauthorization,” she said. “We can inform a reauthorization.”
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