Tammi Cooper UMHB
Interview topic timestamps
00:34 – WHAT IS CBE?
Competency-based education means different things to different institutions, however to be impactful
- Learning is most important
- Time takes a backseat
01:15 – MY WAY AT UMHB
- UMHB recognized that they did not currently serve adult learners well
- UMHB up until then very traditional
- Semester based
- Mostly face to face courses
- Aimed at serving students straight out of high school
- Traditional residential campus
- UMHB close to Fort Hood Military base where active duty especially need the flexibility and accessibility that a traditional program couldn’t offer
- As a solution, UMHB designed a program aimed at Adult Learners
- Subscription model, flat rate of $3000 for 6 months
- Could take as many competencies as they wanted in that 6 month period with no additional charge
- Resources included at no extra charge
- don’t have to purchase textbooks
- network of success coaches
- access to full time faculty subject matter experts
02:36 – HOW MY WAY AT UMHB GOT STARTED
- President and provost excited about the program, so from the very beginning, had senior leader input and support from a resource and idea perspective
- Held voluntary open information sessions for faculty to get them excited about the program
- Shared stories about personal educational journeys
- Inspired faculty to think about how a non-traditional, adult learner could benefit from a CBE program, how it could change the trajectory of their lives
- Faculty started seeing how people they knew would benefit from a CBE program
05:00 – EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF CURRICULUM
Bachelor of Applied Studies degree in Organizational Leadership program developed internally
- To keep costs down for students, decided not to purchase a publisher’s content for curriculum
- Instead open education resources and resources that were freely available through the library databases
- Challenge for faculty who were used to selecting a textbook for the course
- – Asked the faculty to develop the material themselves
- – To vet material for the competencies that they were asking the students to demonstrate.
- Started with the designing the assessments and then faculty filling in the content from open education and library resources
- Brought onboard one of the faculty librarians as the Open Education Guru
- She vets all of the material the the faculty selects
- That the material is being used in the appropriate way
- Can it be embedded, linked, what are copyright issues
07:15 – DEVELOPING A STRUCTURE FOR CURRICULUM DESIGN
- Once the resource strategy was decided, then had to decide how to manage the curriculum design process
- Curriculum design process can become unwieldy (for any institution) without a structure in place
- UMHB faculty are owners of a lot of the process
- Curricular Architect Team – faculty trained in curriculum and instruction
- Became adept at “How do I write a good competency statement” and “How do I write a good authentic assessment?”
- Those faculty began to train other faculty
- Instructional Design Team
- Instructional designers
- Media specialists
- Copy editor
08:59 – CHOOSING A DELIVERY SYSTEM
- When deciding on how to deliver the educational experience to students in the My Way program, had to figure out what technology would do the things they wanted to do
- Described all the features they ideally wanted
- Realized that traditional management systems would not be up to standards they wanted
- Traditional LMS (Learning Management System) typically course-based whereas in this program, needed a student-based system
- Selected Fidelis Education, which touts itself as a learning relationship management system
- students root of system
- provides way to management relationships first, but also provide curriculum and content to students where ever they are
- provides coaches with dashboards, flags, ability to track activity feeds on every student
- enables faculty to be assigned to specific assessments
11:19 – FACULTY LOADING
Had to think about how to compensate faculty during the development phase as well as when the program gets implemented
- During development phase, paid faculty stipends at credit hour rate equal to development of regular online courses
- When program launches, faculty subject matter experts will go into system and grade and evaluate assessments for the competency anchors assigned to them
- Each competency anchor equals 2 to 6 credit-hour equivalents
- Faculty pay is adjusted for the per credit-hour equivalent
- Faculty will log in, score and evaluate assessments, maintain a learning community around their competency anchor to monitor and answer questions that may arise, will tutor one-on-one if needed, and will email welcoming new students to their area
In terms of faculty loading
- First year piloting 50 students and assigning one faculty member per competency anchor and asking the faculty to track their time to use as benchmark for the following year
- For first year, compensating faculty at similar to overload or adjunct faculty rate at UMHB
- The benchmark will help to figure out how to compensate regular faculty who also want to teach a My Way course
13:51 – ACCREDITATION PROCESS
- When looking at the idea of creating this program, started conversations immediately with regional accreditor
- Submitted a substantive change and a few months later received green light
- Kept constant communication with SACSCOC (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges) – helped to prevent delays to approval
14:43 – BACK-END CONSIDERATIONS
Back-end considerations are really important for any institution considering competency-based education because every back-end system will be impacted
- Creates a university inside a university
- Once My Way program approved, back-end units at all meetings
- Having these people on board early and allowing them to think about the processes they used and changes that needed to be made were really significant
16:05 – MAPPING COMPETENCIES BACK TO COURSES
Need to have a roadmap of competencies matching back to courses
- Protects the student should they decide to go back to traditional courses or transfer
16:57– STUDENT RECRUITMENT PROCESS
Need to think about how to recruit students into your competency-based education program and what type of student you want to recruit
- What is the problem you are trying to solve?
- UMHB hired a full-time recruiting and admissions person for My Way program
- This person became versed in CBE and was on the ground floor of building recruiting materials, prospective student website
- The My Way program was an entirely different market than the rest of the university
- First year not aggressively recruiting because just want to fill the pilot group, benchmark, and see if they can deliver a quality experience for those students before ramping up enrollment
- Social media also used in recruiting process
- Also contacted students who left UMHB and did not complete their degree and told them about this program
- Also relied on word of mouth
19:18 – FUTURE OF MY WAY AT UMHB
Future really depends on how successful pilot year is, but
- Hope to expand the pilot program
- Partner with other institutions so less reinventing the wheel
- Movement toward Texas Affordable Baccalaureate means all institutions have a role to play and can form partnerships with other universities and community colleges
20:04 – LOOKING BACK AT THE CHALLENGES
- Two years is a long time to work on a program without being able to implement it
- There are a lot of roadblocks
- Change is difficult and this is disruptive change
- To back-end processes
- To how faculty think about the way they teach
- Even just fundamental philosophical discussions as to whether CBE is a viable option for education
21:58 – FOR THOSE CONSIDERING CBE
Make sure you know why you are doing it – Don’t innovate just to be innovative – Innovate to solve problems. Make sure there’s a problem you are trying to solve and that this type of model will solve that problem
22:43 – DON’T GO IT ALONE
- Reach out to other institutions that have CBE programs and hear their lessons learned and advice on how to move forward
- Also resources within the state of Texas that can be tapped
- Competency-Based Education Consortium, which is part of the Fast Track for Success Grant
- Institute for Competency Based Education at Texas A&M–Commerce