competency-based education - iatul conference … education iatul annual conference july 7, 2015 new...

Competency-based Education

IATUL Annual Conference

July 7, 2015

New Challenges and New Opportunities

Vorführender

Präsentationsnotizen

Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. Today, I want to talk about a pedagogy or approach to education that is gaining in popularity in the United States, which has some important ramifications for libraries and librarians, competency-based education. At Purdue, we are experimenting with CBE in our own, newly minted Polytechnic Institute, so I want to share with you our initial experiences engaging with the program.

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What is Competency Based Education?

• Form of education derives from analysis

of prospective or actual role in modern society and

attempts to certify student progress on the basis of demonstrated performance in some or all

aspects of that role…demonstrations are independent

of time spent in formal educational

settings. –

FIPSE (Fund for the Improvement of Post‐ Secondary Education)

Vorführender


I like this definition of CBE, which actually dates back to 1980, as it outlines and emphasizes the main concepts of the CBE approach. First, CBE was founded in task analysis, emphasizing vocational aspects of education. CBE traditionally tries to maintain a strong connection to life outside and beyond the university. Frequently, employers are engaged in the determination of knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by students as they enter the workforce. Second, the notion of demonstrating a particular skill is central to CBE. The assessment of the competency should be as authentic as possible, so that one is confident that the student not only has mastered the concept, but can apply it appropriately in context. So, for example, instead of merely being able to name three rhetorical devices on a test, a student should be able to use those devices appropriately when giving a presentation. Finally, in a competency-based approach, students graduate when they have mastered the target competencies for their degree, rather than merely by requiring them to spend a particular amount of time taking a specific number of credit hours. Students can go as quickly or as slowly as they need or are able to, and, for example, if they have life experiences or extracurricular activities in which they have demonstrated particular competencies, those are as valid paths as formal coursework, as verified by their institution.

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Why CBE?

• Consistent Standards• Efficiency• Customization

• Increased Access

Vorführender


So, what are the advantages of competency based education? As identified in the FIPSE report, Standards: By articulating and assessing specific competencies, the institution can assure with more confidence that students who graduate do in fact possess the skills, attitudes, and behaviors required by the program. Rather than assuming that a student who gets a passing grade for a particular course has mastered that content, the CBE approach would require students show mastery of each content area, or would articulate which content areas the student performed well in and which less so. Efficiency: By focusing on the core competencies students need in order to succeed in the program, the curriculum can be focused on addressing those competencies, courses can intentionally determine how and which competencies they will target for development, and students who have already demonstrated a competency will not have to repeat it in subsequent courses. Thus, Customization: As some competencies may be addressed in different courses, students may be able to choose their own path through their degree with more flexibility. They can focus their educational path on content acquisition as well as non-disciplinary competencies, such as the ability to work in teams. However students accumulate the knowledge, skills, and abilities required by the program, through courses or extra-curricular activities, like internships, design competitions, or student organizations, they can progress toward their degree completion. Finally, Increased access: What we call non-traditional students in the United States, are students who do not go directly to college after graduating from high school. Typically, these students have been workplace and are re-entering the educational system and may continue to be working while studying. By allowing these students to demonstrate competencies, for example, from their prior life experiences, they may be able to start their education at an advanced state and/or work at their own pace, combining experiences from the workplace and classroom to make progress toward their degree. These reasons date back to 1979, so…

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Why Now?

• Cost of Education• Accountability Measures

• Information Technology

• Learning Technology

Vorführender


The prior advantages of CBE were articulated in 1980. However, very few programs actually were created based on the competency based approach. So, why is there this renewed interest in CBE? First, the cost of education in the United States has been increasing at a rapid rate for many years. As students and their families are being asked to pay more and more for an education, there has been a cry to find efficiencies in the process, not require students to retake content they already know, and enable students to graduate sooner. Books such as Academically Adrift raise the question ‘what, if anything, are students actually learning in college?,’ with the provocative answer, maybe not much. As such, a competency based approach provides more certainty that there is a set of skills students have developed, with proof through authentic assessments, that they have actually mastered them. Information and Learning technologies provide a much richer way to provide and track learning of students, so the mechanics of compiling and documenting competencies for students has become much more tenable. ePortfolios, for example, allow students and instructors to link competencies with examples of student work demonstrating those competencies. MOOC’s provide scalable educational opportunities for students, and, while a MOOC is often not a substitute for a course, those courses can provide content knowledge packaged in a learning environment that could be useful for students working in a particular area. Overall, the confluence of economics, accountability and technology are making the higher education community take a second look at Competency based education.

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Courses vs. Competencies

Courses

•Completion‐based

•Macro‐level

•Fixed course progression

Competencies

•Performance‐based

•Specific•Individualized•Self‐paced

Vorführender


To recap, on the left hand side are features of the traditional, course-based higher education system, and on the right, features of a competncy-based approach. Course-based approaches focus on completion. they chunk their content into typically three-credit hour segments, and assess based on that level of granularity. Further, there is typically a fixed progression through courses, and, for example, courses may not be taken out of sequence and tend to be taken at similar times by similar students. This is kind of an assembly line approach to education, where students travel through eight semesters of courses, and having successfully passed them, graduate and move on to the workforce. Competency-based approaches on the other hand are performance based. Students who demonstrate a competency within the context of a particular learning experience receive that certification, and those who don’t, don’t. With competencies, much more specific expectations can be made and tracked, and students have more leeway in accumulating the competencies they need in order to graduate. And, in particular, if it takes a student less or more time to demonstrate those competencies, they can take their education path at their own speed.

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What Does this Mean for Libraries?

Standalone courses

•Lacks contextEmbedded in courses

•Lacks weight/ accountability

Traditional Approaches to Information Literacy

Competency‐based Environment

• Takes best of both approaches

– Tracks accountability– Embedded in context

Vorführender


So, what does the CBE approach mean for Libraries, and specifically, opportunities for information literacy integration? Generally, there are two approaches to providing information literacy instruction. Some institutions offer standalone, frequently one-credit hour courses on research strategies, or information gathering. These allow librarians to control grading, so we believe students who pass those classes have demonstrated information skills. However, a frequent complaint of these courses is that students don’t have any context, they are bored and don’t understand how doing a research paper for a library course relates to work in their preferred discipline. The other approach is to embed information instruction into a disciplinary course. In this way, students apply the information skills in the context of their work. However, for example, if the bibliography for their final paper is worth 10% of the grade on the paper, which is 20% of the total grade for the class, students can easily receive credit for the course while completely failing the information literacy component. The competency-based approach, however, allows librarians to have the best of both worlds. Having determined that information literacy is a core competency for a particular program of study, students will have to demonstrate their mastery of those skills in order to graduate. With the competency-based approach, where one can demonstrate mastery in a variety of ways, instruction can be provided in context of their disciplinary courses. Students engaged in any course or experience involving research could conceivably be able to show their information skills and be certified specifically for those skills. I’ll talk a little bit more about this with our experience working with the Purdue Polytechnic Institute.

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Purdue Polytechnic Institute

• May 15 – College of Technology renamed Purdue Polytechnic Institute

VALUES

• Learning by Doing• Multidisciplinary/integrative

• Learner‐Centered• Experiential• Competency‐focused

Vorführender


Just to give a quick overview of the Purdue Polytechnic program, it is extremely new, as our College of Technology, which has styled itself as applied, or ‘practical’ engineering, being renamed as the Polytechnic just this past May. The Purdue Polytechnic decided to change its name to make a statement of the values they stand for as a program, namely…

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Transdisciplinary Degree in Technology

Our inaugural cohort at work…

• Ultimate embodiment of PPI

• Design Lab and Seminar only required courses (each sem.)

• Work with mentor to create individual program of study

• Non‐course requirement is key where students demonstrate

competencies

Vorführender


And, even more recently, just a few weeks ago, the Polytechnic Institute received approval to pursue a degree that I think really exemplifies this new attitude of the College, a Transdisciplinary Degree in Technology. 1/3 of credits taken in this degree are Design and Seminar courses expressly focused on integrating knowledge through experiential activities and discussions. They emphasize making connections between courses and applying concepts across courses. Aside from the Design Lab and Seminar, students are free to create their own plan of study in consultation with and approval of their mentor. Thus, if a student is interested in audio technology, they might pursue coursework in aesthetics, acoustics, electrical engineering, psychology, and music theory among other areas, to develop a broad, deep, and multidisciplinary understanding of that field. And, this is the first degree that explicitly requires students meet certain competencies as a non-course requirement for the major. While there are still credit requirements for the major (in particular federal financial aid and other existing administrative systems have been difficult to reconcile with a purely competency-based program), the focus of the program is to translate learning in different courses into the core competencies.

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Trans-D Tech Competencies

• Use Design Thinking Principles

• Communicate Effectively

• Envision and Execute Independently

• Innovate and Create

• Apply Systems Thinking

• Work Productively in Teams

• Apply Disciplinary Knowledge

• Apply Ethical Reasoning

Three levels: Developing, Emerging, Proficient

Includes Information Literacy

Vorführender


Here are the eight competencies of the Transdisciplinary degree. While information literacy does not appear at the top level, it is explicitly included as a sub-competency within the Communicate Effectively competency. It also appears implicitly in several of the other competencies, as, for example, Design Thinking involves gathering information about users and their needs, innovating and creating requires an understanding of prior art, and applying systems thinking and working productively in teams require organizing and communicating knowledge. Additionally, I should note that these competencies each have three levels, developing, emerging, and proficient. They provide milestones for students so they can see that they are making progress on their road toward mastery with these competencies, while also showing them there is more to learn. Each level of competency requires more depth of thought and complexity of performance.

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Information Literacy Sub-competency

Developing Level

•Analyzes assignments to identify missing information and ambiguities

•Uses simple search strategies to locate information; not all information on open web

•Determines whether sources are scholarly or not

•Assembles information from multiple sources to draw appropriate conclusions

•Cites and references information appropriately

Vorführender


Within the information literacy subcompetency, which was developed by Purdue Polytechnic and Libraries faculty collaboratively, I’ve shown here just the Developing level, the most basic of the three competency levels. The competencies follow the general outline of the American Library Association/ACRL Information Literacy competency standards, that is, Identifying the need for information, searching for information efficiently and effectively, evaluates information for quality and relevance, applies information appropriately to complete a task, and acknowledges use of information in an ethical manner. The competencies as written on this slide indicate how those ACRL competency standards have been translated by the Polytechnic faculty members in consultation with librarians.

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Implementing the IL competency

• Purdue’s OpenPassport badge system (www.openpassport.org)

• InfoSEAD model

• Modular approach to respect learner‐centered focus

Vorführender


So, next comes the implementation of the IL competencies. This was actually a fortuitous coincidence that as the Libraries were starting to play with a badging system developed by the university’s Learning Technologies unit, the then College of Technology was just beginning to think about their Polytechnic and competency-based initiative. Thus, the Libraries had started developing an information literacy badge, even though we didn’t yet have a market for it. As the Purdue Polytechnic also found that Purdue’s Open Passport system was a promising way to track competencies, so we were fortunate that we could adapt the work we’d done to the needs of this Polytechnic program. In particular, we had been developing the Info Lit badge using the InfoSEAD model developed by librarians and researchers in the School of Engineering Education, which focus on four key areas: Seeking, Evaluating, Applying, and Documenting information, which I will describe in the following slides. As one last note about developing the badge as a way to operationalize the IL competencies, we wanted to keep the badge as generic as possible, to enable students to meet the requirements using work products from any course that involved significant research component.

http://www.openpassport.org/

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Initial Implementation

Outcomes

•Explore a Topic •Develop and Refine Research

Question

•Compare search engine results

•Refine Searches•Evaluate Search ResultsDeliverables

Mind Map, Environmental Scan, Refined Research Question,

Reflective Search Log

Vorführender


Ok, so on to the specifics. For the seeking ‘sub-sub-competency’ of the information literacy sub-competency, students need to identify their learning need and search for appropriate information to refine and ultimately fulfill that need. This involves exploring a topic, generating a research question to focus their information need, conducting preliminary and more comprehensive searches, using search strategies to refine and focus their search, and then evaluate their search results. Since CBE is performance driven, students provide artifacts of their information search process, including the evidence listed here.

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Outcomes

•Evaluate quality of information source

•Evaluate relevance of information source

Deliverables

•Source Evaluation worksheet

Vorführender


On to evaluation. The focus of this competency is to have students critically read the information they gather along two axes, quality and relevance. In terms of quality, the typical measures of authority, currency, audience, and purpose are used to determine whether the information located is appropriate to inform the information need the student has identified. Similarly, we ask students to critically read the information source for relevance to their information need, by, for example, extracting specific information or data that impact their understanding or lead to evidence based decisionmaking. For this competency, we ask students to explicitly describe their thinking when evaluating information sources for a project they are working on.

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Outcomes

•Use information ethically and appropriately to strengthen

assertions/arguments

Deliverable

•Research paper, report, project

Vorführender


In terms of applying information, we ask students to use information appropriately in crafting their arguments. Information sources should be interpreted ethically, and not, for example, mined for sound bites that sound good but are taken out of context. We assess the appropriate use of information by examining an actual research paper, report, etc., to make sure that assertions made contain references, and check the sources to make sure the arguments made in the paper actually reflect the content from the source, and that the source itself is reliable and evidence-based.

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Outcomes

•Appropriately paraphrase, quote, and cite materials/ideas used

•Ethically access information

•Demonstrate basic understanding of intellectual

property

Deliverables Research paper, project, report

Vorführender


Similarly, the documentation component of the badge asks students to appropriately paraphrase, quote and reference assertions made in a paper, using an appropriate format as given by the instructor or community for which the project has been created. Additionally, we ask students to demonstrate an understanding of intellectual property concepts, as technology-related disciplines interact with a variety of IP, from copyrights, to patents, trade secrets, and trademarks. The paper or project submitted for the Apply component of the badge can also be submitted to meet the Document component, but the two aspects are graded independently.

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Results

• Piloted in 1st

year Seminar Class

• Librarian embedded as co‐instructor – Several mini‐lectures/activities

– Graded Information Literacy activities

• High incompletion rate (30% for Use and Documentation challenge)

• Multiple rounds of revision

• High quality bibliographies of those completed

• Challenges of time‐management, self‐direction, transfer

Vorführender


So, after all the development, how did this approach work in its first implementation? It was piloted within the first year Seminar Class, with a librarian on board as a co-instructor with instructors from the PPI, Communication, and English. The librarian provided several mini-lectures and activities sprinkled throughout the semester at appropriate times when students were working on particular projects for the seminar class. Librarians took responsibility for grading the Information Literacy badge submissions from the students. We did see a high incompletion rate for the course, which was in line for completion for the non-library badges, which was less achievement than we hoped for. There were a few reasons for this. First, a competency based approach was very new for the students, who were used to teachers telling them exactly what to do, grading homeworks and exams, and in general directing the course. The Seminar/Design lab experience, on the other hand were largely self-directed. There were no hard deadlines. Students were given tasks for the semester, but encouraged to develop their own plan for progressing to meet those needs. While they were encouraged to be timely in their work, several students struggled with taking responsibility for their progress, particularly as other courses they were taking that had firm deadlines were easier for them to pay attention to in the short term. Students also were used to the notion that they just needed to turn something in by the end of the semester to finish the course. While the instructors emphasized that students would have to keep trying until they mastered a particular competency, students assumed they would get it right the first time. This wasn’t the case, as most submissions needed to be revised, several multiple times, before students reached a level of mastery appropriate for the competency. As a result, many students ran out of time in the first semester, and incompletes were given for courses. These were cleaned up in the following semester, but it certainly was a wake up call to us that students need a lot of help transitioning to a student centered model of learning. In a similar vein, while students were given activities that developed the targeted competencies as part of the courses they were taking, it was an additional step for them to submit the results of their work to the instructors as indicating they met a particular competency. This two-part process, where students do the work but then are required to metacognitively think about what they have just done and what it signifies for their learning, what competencies they have demonstrated, is a significant leap for students. Although we believe it sets the stage for students becoming more intentional, self-directed learners, there is definitely a learning curve as they pick up those skills. Having expressed this difficulty, in the second semester, instructors were very impressed with the Trans D students’ ability to make connections across classes. One physics instructor said that he’d never seen students so consciously make the connections from prior semester work to the current one. As transfer is a constant problem in higher education, we were surprised a pleased that external instructors had noticed this effect.

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Conclusions

• Still trying to fine‐tune amount of scaffolding needed for student‐centered learning approach

• Competency‐based program allows much deeper integration of libraries into all aspects of course

development

• Confidence that students who ‘pass’

have demonstrated a proficiency in information

literacy ‐van Epps, Johnson, Fosmire (2015) Badging

your way to information literacy. ASEE

Conference paper.

• CBE provides a high‐impact, efficient method for engaging with technology faculty

Vorführender


So, what did we learn from this experience? We are still trying to fine-tune the scaffolding and support we provide students, particularly as they transition to a learner-centered educational approach. From the Libraries perspective, this has been an excellent opportunity to embed deeply in the technology curriculum. As mentioned previously, we did find that this approach blends the control of a stand-alone course with the contextual relevance of embedded instruction. We do have a much higher level of confidence that students who complete the PPI IL experience do in fact have those information literacy skills than many of the students who take other university-endorsed ‘information literacy’ courses at the university. And, because of the confidence and the integration, we believe that the CBE approach as described and implemented at Purdue provides a high-impact, efficient method for librarians to engaging with technology faculty.

competency-based education - iatul conference … education iatul annual conference july 7, 2015 new...

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