This link describes a competency based education degree in health sciences. PSA is interested in learning how competency based education may improve learning outcomes.
The University of Texas System will be the first in the nation to launch a personalized, competency-based education program system-wide aimed at learners from high school through post-graduate studies.
What sets the UT System approach apart from other competency-based programs is a focus on offering personalized and adaptive degrees and certificates that are industry-aligned and – via technology developed by the UT System – can systematically improve success, access and completion rates in areas of high employment demand.
Noticed a link in that above story to the “Institute for Transformational Learning”…. and thought, hmmm, could be a rich resource. We learned a great deal from the Carnegie Melon online learning innovator that came to NMSU. Perhaps we could make a contact with the ITL above, who might have someone in El Paso, or sometimes visits there.
Competency Based Learning seems to also be not much different from “just in time” learning, and adaptive learning, and knowing the student’s needs learning…IOW very much in the flow of where online learning is going. A big unknown for that kind of learning, is who is going to certify competence, and how much are they going to charge for that certificate?
Back to that odd reality of MIT making their courses available for free, but charging huge bucks for the certification. Also, competency based learning seems close to a model of enterprise training for employees that is ongoing a lot of innovation at present. Will this sort of learning be enabled by the employer? How much of that education expense will the enterprise take on?
As we know, in the past, the lines between what business would pay for, and what institutions like DACC would pay for, have been a mutual hot potato exercise. Will that change if the actual cost is much lower, and if the results dramatically increase employee productivity?