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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
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  • 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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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.
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How should quality assurance for competency-based ed work? - Page 2 of 2 - eCampus News... - 0 views

www.ecampusnews.com/...2 CBE competency-based
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  • The government should learn from its lessons and shift from funding based on inputs to focusing on incentivizing the outcomes it would like to see from higher education.
  • A better path forward would be for the federal government to encourage a variety of experiments over the coming years that try out different approaches in a controlled way, all while releasing programs from the current input-based constraints to learn what works, in what combinations and circumstances, and what are the unintended consequences.
  • A key tenet of all the efforts is that employers, along with students, are likely best positioned to determine program quality—and programs that align their assessments to the competencies employers need will likely be in a strong place.
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  • Although online, competency-based programs have been around for some time, opening up federal funding at scale across the higher education system for lots of new players has never been done before. As the government gets into this game, harnessing, and not limiting, the potential that competency-based learning brings—to be fundamentally about a student’s learning—as it seeks to assure quality is critical. The nation has yet to master that.
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Feds mull experiment on aid and accreditation for alternative providers | InsideHigherEd - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...ditation-alternative-providers experiment aid accreditation alternative providers
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  • Sasha Thackaberry on 21 Jul 15
     
    More news about federal aid for alternative credentials.
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A disruption grows up? | education's digital future - 0 views

edf.stanford.edu/...disruption-grows disruption education future competency-based competency elearning
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  • Sasha Thackaberry on 03 Nov 14
     
    "Competency-based education could be a game-changer for adult students, probably more so than MOOCs. Yet despite the backing of powerful supporters, colleges have been reluctant to go all-in because they are unsure whether accreditors and the federal government will give the nod to degree programs that look nothing like the traditional college model."
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Group of seven major universities seeks to offer online microcredentials | InsideHigherEd - 3 views

www.insidehighered.com/...-offer-online-microcredentials competency-based prior_learning_assessment digital_badges
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  • Highlight
  • Highlight
  • Tentatively dubbed the University Learning Store, the project is a joint effort involving the Georgia Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, the University of Washington, the University of California’s Davis, Irvine and Los Angeles campuses, and the University of Wisconsin Extension.
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  • The idea is to create an “alternative credentialing process that would provide students with credentials that are much shorter and cheaper than conventional degrees,”
  • As with a department store, Schejbal said, the University Learning Store is about offering students different products from different providers.
  • “Those distinctions start to fade” with microcredentials, Bushway said. “The degree is almost a distraction.”
  • Schejbal said the project’s pricing would be of the “freemium” model. That means some of the content would be free, but students would have to spend money when the universities do.
  • “Students really do need to come in and out of education across a lifetime,” said Schejbal, adding that the microcredential project is “looking at people who need them regardless of their degree level.”
  • Tutoring or other support services would also be fee based.
  • “Students will be able to buy these à la carte,” said Schejbal, “or in a package.”
  • The planned online store would not be designed to be federal aid eligible,
  • The quality of the microcredentials in many ways will hinge on the assessments students must successfully complete to earn them
  • The project’s leaders had been working with an outside provider to help build the platform. But Schejbal said the universities eventually had to change gears and begin an open-bid process. That sort of red tape, which affects public universities much more than ed-tech companies, is an example of the challenges the University Learning Store likely will face. (All but one of the group of seven universities are public.)
  • Assessments would come with a price, he said, in part because they would be graded by people rather than computers.
  • The plan is for some of the online content to feature modular instruction, said Schejbal, meaning instructors will interact with students as they progress through the material -- as with a conventional online course, but for a shorter duration.
  • Students will be able to use online content and assessments -- with pieces from different universities -- to prove what they know and can do.
  • “We’re imagining that this would be cheap enough for a student to afford without financial aid,”
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Mr. MOOC comes to Washington | education's digital future - 0 views

edf.stanford.edu/...mr-mooc-comes-washington comes washington education future MOOC MOOCs
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  • A recurring theme of the daylong meeting, most of which was off the record, was that policymaking on higher education is a balancing act of encouraging innovation and safeguarding investments. And while the federal government has plenty of influence, it has only the “blunt instruments” of financial aid programs to actually tell colleges what to do.
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A Competency-Based Educational Shift Is Underway in Higher Ed | EdTech Magazine - 0 views

www.edtechmagazine.com/...ional-shift-underway-higher-ed shift higher higher ed magazine edtech competency competency-based MOOCs credentialing MOOC Purdue University
shared by Sasha Thackaberry on 03 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The Higher Education Act of 1965 is due for reauthorization this year, and direct assessment programs could be in the spotlight. The law, which governs how federal student aid functions, could see some major changes later this year. As part of ongoing discussions for revisiting the act, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation in July that would aid colleges employing competency-based education programs, according to Inside Higher Ed. The educational approach allows students to pursue a degree based on their demonstration of skill mastery instead of their letter grades. The intent is to provide more concrete skills that translate directly to a work environment rather than a theoretical educational approach.
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What Degrees Should Mean @insidehighered - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/..._should_know_and_be_able_to_do online program elearning competency-based federal financial aid
shared by Sasha Thackaberry on 10 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • What should a college graduate know and be able to do? There are as many views on that as there are colleges (thousands), if not individual professors and students (many more). The diversity of opinions about what a college education means has long been seen as a strength of American higher education. But in recent years, many employers and policy makers have argued that the lack of a common definition of what students should know and be able to do -- and a dearth of adequate methods of gauging whether they know it and can do it -- has contributed to a decline in the quality of higher education and to the awarding of more degrees, but of lesser value.
  • Sasha Thackaberry on 10 Nov 14
     
    What should a college graduate know and be able to do? There are as many views on that as there are colleges (thousands), if not individual professors and students (many more). The diversity of opinions about what a college education means has long been seen as a strength of American higher education. But in recent years, many employers and policy makers have argued that the lack of a common definition of what students should know and be able to do -- and a dearth of adequate methods of gauging whether they know it and can do it -- has contributed to a decline in the quality of higher education and to the awarding of more degrees, but of lesser value.
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Lumina-funded group seeks to lead conversation on competency-based education @insidehig... - 0 views

www.insidehighered.com/...ion-competency-based-education learning education teaching assessment group competency-based financial aid federal direct PLA company gates lumina incubator
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  • Competency-based education appears to be higher education’s "next big thing." Yet many academics aren’t sure what it is. And that goes double for lawmakers and journalists.
  • A new group is stepping in to try to clear up some of the confusion. The nascent Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) will include up to 20 institutions that offer competency-based degrees or are well on their way to creating them.
  • A new group is stepping in to try to clear up some of the confusion. The nascent Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) will include up to 20 institutions that offer competency-based degrees or are well on their way to creating them. The Lumina Foundation is funding the three-year effort. Public Agenda, a nonprofit research organization, is coordinating the work.
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  • The reason for the project’s creation, said several officials who are working on it, is a growing need for shared guiding principles. Interest in online education is high, and many college leaders want competency-based education to avoid the hype, misconceptions and resulting backlash massive open online courses have received.
  • A separate Lumina grant will help pay for a website that will make public much of the network’s work and research. Southern New Hampshire University is responsible for creating the website.
  • That project is an "incubator" that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding through its Next Generation Learning Challenges grant, which is managed by Educause. To participate, colleges will need to submit a plan to begin creating a competency-based program by January 2015, according to a draft document about the grant.
  • Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, welcomed the deepening conversation over competency-based education. She said she hopes the network can provide some clarity on the emerging delivery model, which the association has viewed warily. The competency-based movement does have promise, she said. Ideally, Schneider said, competency-based programs share goals with the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP), a Lumina-funded effort that attempts to define what degree holders should know and be able to do. Schneider helped author the profile.
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