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