Competency-Based Learning: Proof of Professionalism

Michael Williams｜Thomas Edison State University, Trenton, USA

Tami Moser｜Oklahoma State University, Weatherford, USA?

Joseph Youngblood II｜Thomas Edison State University, Trenton, USA

Marc Singer｜Thomas Edison State University, Trenton, USA

Competency-Based Learning: Proof of Professionalism

[Abstract]

Increasingly, industry and higher education leaders are acknowledging that traditional models of education no longer adequately prepare university graduates for the cognitive and competency rigors of the 21st century workplace. Globalization and occupational specialization have radically altered employer’s expectations concerning the types of knowledge, competencies and skills graduates must bring to employment.

To meet the evolving expectations of industry leaders, higher education must undertake educational reforms focused on preparing graduates for contemporary careers. Without systemic and relevant changes to traditional methods instruction and workplace readiness, higher education may lose its viability as an educational partner to industry. If this should occur, employers may form new learning alliances with institutions articulating different educational mission and curricula focused on enabling graduates to master competencies critical to business growth, organizational development and marketplace sustainability.

While leaders from industry, higher education and government debate educational reforms, an educational movement has emerged that may be addressing many of the key educational and workforce readiness concerns of employers. Several colleges, universities and secondary schools nationwide have developed competency-based education initiatives enabling students to acquire business relevant competencies. If competency-based degree programs evidence greater effectiveness than traditional ones, higher education may experience an unprecedented and cultural and pedagogical transformation.

Introduction

Increasingly, leaders in industry and higher education are acknowledging that traditional models and methods of education are no longer adequately preparing college graduates for the cognitive and competency rigors of the 21st century workplace. Globalization and occupational specialization are radically altering employer expectations relative to the types of knowledge, competencies and skills graduates must bring to employment. Unlike previous decades, today’s, workforce entrants are expected to work collaboratively in international teams, manage cultural differences and demonstrate the critical and innovative thinking skills necessary to address complex problems resulting in high-value business contributions.

To meet the evolving expectations of industry leaders, colleges and universities must be responsive to their calls for the educational reforms required of today’s workforce. In order to remain relevant to its stakeholders, higher education programing must be reevaluated and reconfigured to meet the organizational productivity and sustainability requirements of this millennium.

Educational reforms may prove challenging. However, without a systemic reassessment of the effectiveness of higher education’s ability to increase graduate’s workplace readiness, institutions may lose its viability as a partner to industry. Employers seek candidate feeder relationships with college and universities. Therefore, those institutions producing graduates equipped with business knowledge, competencies and skills necessary to meet employer and industry demand will be well positioned as premier educational partners in global market.

Today, postsecondary education reform remains a fiercely debated topic in government, industry and higher education. As the debate rages, competency-based education has emerged as a viable educational alternative for advancing workforce readiness. Currently, several institutions of higher education, as well as secondary schools systems are piloting competency-based education programs to determine its effectiveness in enabling graduate workplace preparedness. A key component of the competency-based pilot initiatives is measuring students’ mastery of specific competencies. If the pilot program results indicate that competency mastery increases job readiness, then students graduating from competency-based degree programs may be more employment ready, it turn more competitive in the job market than students completing non-competency-oriented degree programs.

Interest in competency-based education appears to be increasing. Like a tsunami, fueled by shifts in the tectonic plates of the global workplace, experimentation with competency-based education seems to be gathering momentum. Contemporary global economic, political and social conditions continue to change rapidly and radically resulting in industry and marketplace destabilization. In the last decade, international financial crises, military insurrections and resource scarcities have wreaked havoc on workforce employment and global productivity. These conditions, acerbated by the challenges associated with preparing workforce ready graduates, may have contributed to the growing skepticism by industry, higher education and government leaders of the viability of current teaching methods and student learning used in contemporary higher education.

However, the promise and potential inherent in competency-based education remains unproven and unrealized. While the literature addressing competency-based is growing, it is not recognized as mode of learning. Current research focused on competency-based education has produced largely inferential, not conclusive results concerning its efficacy a viable educational alternative to current educating practices. As a result, while many leaders believe in the veracity of competency-based education, verifiable research continues; data collected and analyzed to determine its viability.

If after the result from the research and pilots associated with competency-based education suggest that contemporary teaching and learning practices used in higher education are less effective in preparing graduates to meet the workplace readiness requirements of the 21st century global workplace, competency-based education may become a preferred educational approach by industry worldwide. This result has the potential to radically change higher education culture and educating, in turn workplace productivity and sustainability.

Where We Are

In her 2012 Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) Report “Competency-Based Degree Programs in the U.S. Postsecondary Credentials for Measurable Student Learning and Performance,” author Rebecca Klein-Collins wrote “Today our higher education system is facing a crisis regarding its perceived quality. One model for improving quality is competency-based education, in which an institution clearly defines the specific competencies expected of its graduates.” Over the past 25 years, accountability for preparing graduates for workplace readiness has been an issue associated with national competitiveness in the global marketplace. A byproduct of this concern has been a broad-based government and industry mandate that higher education reevaluate its current educational models and methods within the context of enabling students to master the cognitive capabilities and applied competencies necessary to secure employment and make value-based contributions to organizations upon graduation.

Increasingly, organizational leaders want evidence that graduates have mastered the specific knowledge, competencies and skills necessary to effectively perform job responsibilities. No longer are superior academic grades, credits earned and prescribed timelines of matriculation considered promises of performance. Instead, measured mastery of key competencies is becoming the preferred proof of professionalism. Competency-based education confirms mastery of degree-specific competencies using formative, summative and authentic measures resulting in Pass/Fail performance reporting, instead of a grade-for-credit scale. Beverly Williams, Vice President of Human Resources for Langan Engineering and Environmental Services, Inc., a global engineering and environmental services firm in Elmwood Park, NJ states “Competency-based education is attractive to employers. Typically, these graduates are able to quickly contribute to the workplace resulting in increased organizational performance and productivity.”

In her 2012 article “Why Companies Want Competency-Based Education,” author Diane Johnson endorsed the value of competency-based education to learners and employers. “When hiring graduates of competency-based programs, employers can be more confident that the employees can actually do what they claim they can do. They possess substantially developed skills sets, reducing training time and can potentially contribute to corporate efforts to be successful through innovation and competitive advantage.”

Over the past decade, momentum for offering competency-based degree programs in colleges and universities has increased. The emergence of institutions including Western Governors University and Southern New Hampshire University were widely heralded as new and innovative initiatives in post-secondary education. Many higher education professionals viewed their curricula as a nascent movement challenging the primacy and validity of the Carnegie Unit as the foundational organizing framework for degree granting in higher education. However, these institutions were building on decades of educational research, experimentation and practice focused on designing and delivering alternative methods of educating adults pioneered by adult-centric institutions such as Open University, Athabasca University and Thomas Edison State College. As educators and researchers continue experimenting with and assessing different competency-based educational strategies, all seem to share a unifying purpose; enabling graduate workforce preparation and workplace readiness. As job types and competency requirements change, graduates will increasingly encounter the condition of filling positions that have not yet been created. Therefore, creating new educational models and methods that enable employment readiness using innovative approaches for the evolving global workplace is a critical socio-economic consideration. As US Secretary of State Arne Duncan stated in a 2012 speech concerning competency-based education and employment “While such programs [competency-based education] are now the exception, I want them to be the norm." (Mendenhall, 2012).

How higher education prepares graduates to successfully engage emerging job conditions is in question. Competency-based education appears to be a viable educational option being lauded as a preferred educational approach for meeting the competency and skills requirements of contemporary and future employment markets. As findings from the 2013 Gallup-Lumina Foundation Report offered, “...only 14 percent of Americans and just 11 percent of business leaders strongly agreed that graduates have the necessary skills and competencies to succeed in the workplace” (p. 23). If accurate, competency-based education may emerge as a benchmark of excellence associated with workforce readiness.

Where We Were

Past education reform initiatives aimed at changing curriculum or altering instructional methods in higher education can be traced to shifts in national socio-political perspectives. In the 20thcentury, educational reform legislation including the 1983 A Nation At Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, warning that the United States educational system was failing to produce a globally competitive workforce and The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, endorsing standards- based education reform by establishing high academic standards and measurable goals, had direct impact on how students and employers perceived the purpose of and yield from higher education. Within this period’s crucible of educational legislative reform, an emergent educational amalgam was being forged, perhaps unforeseen by legislators and educators. A formulation created by melding together the urgency of producing a globally competitive workforce with a mandate for establishing high academic standards that were employment centered and measurable. This integration of societal and educational elements tempered by increasing globalization, driven by innovative learning technologies and fueled by the spread of entrepreneurism was instrumental in shaping new perspectives concerning 21st century higher education. Higher education institutions recognizing these emerging perspectives were witnessing the genesis of an educational paradigm shift, one favoring competency mastery over content instruction; student-led learning over institutionally predetermined instructional timeframes and demonstration of skills over content testing and time spent studying prescribed topics.

From Critics to Competencies

Critics of competency-based education offer contrary view concerning its value and viability. Authors writing about the viability of competency-based education (Chappell, Gonczi and Hager, 2000) write “...the competency-based education and training movements are embedded within a particular set of existing economic, social, and political power relationships are anti-emancipatory and exploitative...they cannot be divorced from the nature of work as organised in free market economies.” Naranjo (2012) posits “...competency-based education is tied to a neoliberal model of education that adopts and utilizes narrow, functional approaches to education...it is an inappropriate and reductive representation of learning.” Advancing this perspective, Dall’Alba and Sandberg (1996) write “The emphasis on behaviours and performance, rather than on the mastering of cognitive skills, is consistent with the view that perceives competence in terms of basic attributes. This view not only tends to produce narrow technical skills, but also ignores the students’ and workers’ meaningful experiences in the practical field.”

These proffered arguments questioning the value of competency-based education reinforce a foundational view that this type of education may inhibit not enable education. “The competency model is classified as a tool that, if defined and assessed too narrowly, can actually work to hinder education and training” (Kerka, 1998). Perspectives concerning the value and viability of competency-based learning are in flux. Higher education leader’s understanding and endorsement of competency-based education remain in question. Increasingly, the debate concerning the viability of competency-based education is taking place in forums of all types. Key questions being debated focus on its educational purpose, assessment rigor and educational methods in preparing students for the 21st century global workforce. While researchers and educational practitioners explore the viability of competency-based education, it remains a work-in-progress; an educational experiment sharply criticized for its perceived limits in developing critical thinking and indifference to interdisciplinary curriculum delivery.

However, support for alternative methods of acquiring college-level credit is evident nationally. In President Obama’s 2013 report “Plan to Make College More Affordable” he stated his desire to “promote innovation and competition in the higher education field through a number of different initiatives including awarding credits based on learning, not seat time.” As a result, a plethora of promising educating strategies including competency-based education are is being explored. This sentiment was echoed by David A. Bergeron, acting assistant secretary for postsecondary education in the United States Department of Education “We're very much trying to encourage institutions to come forward with programs that use [competency-based] direct assessment as this should be a very effective way of delivering education in the future."

The ongoing debate concerning competency-based education has produced innovative ideas and questions concerning its evolution and structure. Three ideas that frame and may enhance the effectives of this educational method include: journeymanship, faculty as facilitator, and learner as learning steward.

Journeymanship in Education: The Past Becoming the Future

Unlike other approaches to learning, competency-based education specifically focuses on demonstrable abilities. As author Klein-Collins writes, one of the unifying concepts of competency-based education as an assumption that “an educated person is someone who does not just ‘know” but can also “do.” In addition, Clifford Adelman, senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy notes “Competencies are not wish-lists: they are learned, enhanced, expanded; they mark empirical performance, and a competency statement either directly—or at a slant—posits a documented execution.”

Once learners demonstrate mastery of a required skill, they advance to more sophisticated levels of skills mastery. Typically, learners come to competency-based education with partially and fully mastered skills. In order to assess skills mastery, learners must be assessed via skill- specific rubrics. When it is determined that a specific skill is not mastered, learners are responsible for acquiring the theoretical and applied knowledge necessary to advance their understanding and practice in order to satisfy predetermined requirements associated with the skill. Achieving mastery in any field of endeavor requires guidance, practice and refinement. For centuries, master craftsmen established organizations tasked with managing, monitoring and certifying skills development and competency mastery of its members. Of these organizations, the Medieval Guilds and contemporary higher education doctoral mentorship practices serve as practical examples of endorsing and enabling competency-based education.

The medieval guilds were established in order to influence taxation management, price regulation for goods and services and standards for working conditions. A key focus of the medieval guilds was consumer protection. Newman (2013) writes “While guilds actively worked for the protection and safety of merchants and craftsmen, they also ensured proper protection of consumers by committing to fair pricing [and were] also responsible for ascertaining the quality of goods and products offered to consumers.” To ensure the quality of goods and services through craft mastery, guild members were expected to undertake and offer long-term apprenticeships with the goal of achieving master status.

To guild members, as well as contemporary doctoral students, competency mastery is a phased experienced. For apprentices and students alike, being assessed for competency mastery and demonstrating partial to no mastery, requires remediation or new learning in order to transition to advanced phases of competency development and ultimately mastery. Guilds used a three designation mastery model for categorizing skill mastery; craftsman, journeyman and master designating advancement in the mastery process. In traditional academia, the Guild craftsman, journeyman and master designations could correspond to craftsman (undergraduate degree), journeyman (master degree) and master (doctorate degree). Applying the guild’s mastery model categories within competency-based education programs, might serve as an organizing principle for framing the progressive mastery of prescribed competencies and skills. The resulting hierarchal mastery model could enable students to focus their attention on acquiring new or remediating existing skills, in turn ascending the mastery model toward master status.

Faculty as Facilitator

In his 2012 article “A Disruptive Look at Competency-Based Education,” author Louis Soares asks “...will innovative learning initiatives [competency-based education] and others like it truly disrupt the current model of postsecondary education?” Soares continues “The answer to that question lies in whether or not competency-based education can be effectively taken to scale. If the answer is “yes,” then the challenge becomes identifying what type of innovations in policy and practice are necessary to accomplish that outcome.” Soares expands the idea of innovation by introducing the concept of “disruptive innovation,” an analytic tool pioneered by Harvard University business professor Clayton Christensen which is a way of thinking about how technology can change organizations, sectors, or industries. Scalability is a critical consideration to advancing competency-based education. While technology, specifically distance learning and collaborative technologies can disseminate competency related content to students, instructor-guided learning will still need to be provided in order to enable and maximize learning. As higher and secondary education builds competency-based education programing, common to each educational level will be the changing role and responsibilities of faculty members tasked with using innovate and disruptive educational practices. Without a reformulation of the faculty, as well as faculty-learner relationship, the promise inherent in competency-based education may not be realized.

In a 2013 Huff Post College Blog titled “What Is Competency-Based Education,” Dr. Robert Mendenhall, President of Western Governors University stated that in order to implement effective competency-based education we [colleges and universities] must “Fundamentally change the faculty role. When faculty serve as lecturers, holding scheduled classes for a prescribed number of weeks, the instruction takes place at the lecturers' pace. For most students, this will be the wrong pace. Some will need to go more slowly; others will be able to move much faster. Competency-based learning shifts the role of the faculty from that of "a sage on the stage" to a "guide on the side." Faculty members work with students; guiding learning, answering questions, leading discussions, and helping students synthesize and apply knowledge.” In her 2013 article “How Competency-Based Learning Actually Works” author Katie Lepi offered “With seat time deemphasized, the professors’ role changes in the CBL [Competency-Based Learning] style of learning – where faculty serve more as a coach or facilitator versus a traditional lecturer. Competency-based learning elevates the role of the professor, positioning them as a guide, with a focus on offering individual student support: evaluation, feedback, identification, intervention, and remediation of at-risk learners.”

In public secondary education, competency-based education appears to be expanding and thriving. In public school systems nationwide, competency-based learning initiatives are being established and evaluated with the goal of determining their viability. For example, the 2013 Iowa Department of Education (IDoE) “Competency-Based Education Task Force Preliminary, Report” indicates that “Competency-based pathways provide ways to validate learning of competencies that occurs outside the structure of the traditional school and offer flexibility for schools to engage students in learning that moves beyond the traditional constraints of seat time and divisions among content areas.” The guidelines state that these “pathways” to learning will “...provide student-centered, personalized learning systems through which students of all ages develop both ownership and control of their own learning. As a result, educators and students will be better able to connect learning to students’ interests.” The document continues “The relationship between student and teacher is fundamentally changed as students gain understanding of what working with competencies requires and take ownership of learning and teachers provide the appropriate supports for learning.”

In their 2012 article “The Learning Edge Supporting Student Success in a Competency-Based Learning Environment,” authors Laura Shubilla and Chris Sturgis describe the shifting roles and responsibilities of teachers “Competency education changes the nature of the relationship between students and teachers. Student agency in a competency-based environment comes from transparency, demystifying assessments and skill development, and transferring the power inherent in this knowledge from the adults to the students” Klein-Collins (2012) reports that in reconsidering competency-based education we need to “Rethink the traditional models for staffing and courses. A focus on competencies and related assessments may require new or expanded roles for faculty, and it may require a new way to design courses and learning activities.” Lastly, in an April 2013 article published in Inside Higher Education referenced a posting on the United States Department of Education website stating “Perhaps the method’s [competency-based education] most revolutionary and controversial contribution is a changed role for faculty. Instructors don’t teach, because there are no lectures or any other guided path through course material.”

As faculty roles and responsibilities in higher and secondary education change, instructional strategies, curriculum design and course development will need to be reengineered to promote skill mastery resulting in competency development. In her 2013 article “Competency-based education is not new” author Cathy Anderson postulates “Higher education is being driven to change. If competency based education gains acceptance at the K-12 level it is a given that will drive change at the college level. If students and their parents accept competency based education, then they will expect it when they go to college. If employers focus on a demonstration of competencies from their employees, more than the degree, then competency based education will become the accepted demonstration of student learning, knowledge and skills.”

Implementing competency-based education may require faculty to abandon or radically alter their current educational methods. Embracing competency-based education will require all educational stakeholders to experience a “metanoia” or “shift in mind.” In his 1990 seminal work The Fifth Discipline – The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, author Peter Senge introduced the concept of metanoia in the context of the emerging learning organization movement. Senge proffered “The word “Metanoia” means a shift in mind. To grasp the meaning of “metanoia” is to grasp the deeper meaning of “learning,” for learning also involves a fundamental shift or movement of mind [and practice of mastering the competencies of the five disciplines of the learning organization].” Senge’s recognition of “real learning” and its association with competency-based education positions the learning organization model within the context of higher education. In order to enable “real learning” in colleges, universities and public schools, instructors will need to experience a metanoia relative to the teaching of students becoming the facilitation of learners learning.

Learner as Learning Steward

The acceptance of competency-based education in higher education will shift the roles and responsibilities of faculty and students. Traditional models of education cast students in educationally passive roles receiving, processing and regurgitating information. Competency-based education treats learners and learning differently. In this model, learners are considered learning leaders, active knowledge generating participants creating the co-learning process with a facilitator. Learners are stakeholders in and stewards of their own learning. They are responsible for “moving toward mastery” (Senge, p. 126).

Contemporary higher education uses the Carnegie Unit as the measure for the amount of time a subject is studied and the number of credits earned. Soares (2012) summarizes “Using this model [Carnegie Unit], students sit in classrooms for an allotted period of time (a semester or quarter)—[earning specified numbers of credits per course] which also happens to be how schools are compensated for delivering their service—with individual faculty creating highly variable learning experiences through curriculum and instruction.” Competency-based education does not recognize a “credit-based system.” Instead, it presents a competency-based system recognizing “...students will be expected to know and be able to do the following upon graduation...or students earning a degree in [a] discipline will have the following competencies... In addition, credit will be earned as course competences are demonstrated relative to established competency benchmarks.

Anderson (2012) reports that the United States Department of Education offered on their website “Transitioning away from seat time, in favor of a structure that creates flexibility, allows students to progress as they demonstrate mastery of academic content, regardless of time, place, or pace of learning. Competency-based education strategies provide flexibility in the way that credit can be earned or awarded, and provide students with personalized learning opportunities.” To realize this transition, a shift in learning leadership must occur. Learners and faculty would need to undergo significant role reorientations; learners moving from passive to proactive and instructors from teachers to facilitators. However, shifting increased responsibility to learners for acquiring their education places them in unfamiliar territory with minimal understanding of pedagogy and educational process. If learners accept increased responsibility for leading their learning and faculty transition into facilitators, these populations will face challenges associated with maintaining educational efficacy. Anderson continues “My concern is that without the relationship building between faculty and student we may sacrifice professionalism in the field and student retention to achieving their education goals or even ill-defined educational goals."

A review of the competency-based education literature evidences few studies specifically addressing the role of learners leading their education and faculty transitioning to facilitators. However, in the last decade themes supporting empowering learners as stewards of their own learning and exploring the changing roles of faculty are identifiable in the educational press, educational institutions and industry literatures. Authors endorsing the importance of learner’s learning leadership (ISDoE, 2013) and (Shubilla & Stugis, 2012) offer “The relationship between student and teacher [in competency-based education] is fundamentally changed as students gain understanding of what working with competencies requires and take ownership of learning and teachers provide the appropriate supports for learning” (ISDoE). In support of this position, Shubilla and Sturgis (2012) offer “Students need to understand how they learn, what facilitates and what impedes their learning, the competencies they are expected to achieve, the benchmarks for proficiency, and the application of these competencies. The more they understand, the more agency they can take in accessing and integrating feedback and support.”

Stewardship requires a compelling vision of the future, the commitment to evolve beyond current constraints and the knowledge and skills necessary to enable self and others to act in concert to achieve desired outcomes. In this case, learners stewarding their education and enabled by facilitators is a significant responsibility requiring unique competencies and skills. In order to shift the responsibility to learners for stewarding their own learning, they must be assessed to determine their readiness and the probably for success in pursuing a competency-based education. Learners must be readied to perform in their role as learning steward Senge (1990) reflects “Leaders learn to see their vision as part of something larger.” In this case, the “something larger” is the possibility and potential inherent in competency based education. Learner-leaders must be able to “see” and steward their education toward a compelling and self-generated vision of the future.

Creating the Future Today: Proof of Professionalism

In his 1990 seminal work Managing at the Speed of Change, change author Darryl Conner wrote “Change provides us with the opportunity to be victims or architects of our own future.” The higher education landscape is rapidly changing and the role of competency-based education forming. With the emergence of research findings associated with the efficacy of competency-based education, learners may be able to incorporate this learning modality into their educational plan. Moreover, through the availability of sophisticated information technologies, students could assess their competency strength and self-manage their learning; in turn more effectively manage time-to-degree completion. Lastly, if professorial roles transitioned towards learning facilitators, a learner-facilitator partnership could result enabling learners to acquire full ownership of and accountability for their learning. As educational programing, roles and responsibilities flex and options for acquiring higher education broaden; colleges must be prepared to present a full and diverse palette of educational opportunities to learners enabling them to make informed learning decisions.

If over time, leaders in higher education, industry and government determine that competency-based education is a viable and valuable educational choice for preparing learners for the 21st century workplace, it may become a preferred educational approach franked with the indicia?proof of professionalism.

References

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Beverly Williams (Vice President of Human Resources) in discussion with the author 2014.

Reprinted from ACADEMY OF BUSINESS JOURNAL?, Volume II, 2015, Copyright? 2015 All Rights Reserved.