What is the state of the field nationally when it comes to CBE and related innovations in teaching and learning, and how can institutions use this information in developing or implementing their own CBE programs? In this session, American Institutes for Research (AIR) will share findings from the 2019 National Survey of Postsecondary CBE, which includes data from 602 responding institutions about CBE interest, adoption and implementation, as well as barriers and expectations about the future. In this interactive session, participants will have time to reflect on and discuss the major findings, and consider what dynamics they think might be affecting the results, and discuss implications for their work at their own institutions.

Competency-Based Education; survey research
Jessica Mason
[email protected]
Kelle Parsons

The presenters have years of CBE experience creating successful programs and facing obstacles in others. They will share success stories of equity, inclusion, and access and will share data on how adult students were the central focus of building CBE programs. This data will show that more than 90% of the students within these programs over a 5-year period have been non-traditional students who typically might never be able to return to a traditional college program if not for CBE. In addition, this panel will explore the obstacles to implementing a certificate and degree subscription-based CBE program at a community college in Texas. Budget implications, financial aid, administrative policies, and technology constraints are evaluated and described. Specifically, this disruptive innovation highlights the topics of senior‐level support, infrastructural investment, and faculty and staff involvement – all things that either launch or hinder CBE programs. Dr. Ali Esmaeili [email protected] Dr. Erasmus Addae [email protected] Dr. Ninghua Han [email protected]

As Rasmussen College prepared to introduce its comprehensive learner record (CLR), or CBE transcript, it pursued feedback from a number of stakeholder groups including employers, students, and faculty. This presentation shares the process of how Rasmussen introduced the CLR to those who hire Rasmussen College graduates, and how their feedback was used in the continuous improvement of the transcript.

tags: CBE; competency-based; transcripts; CLR; Comprehensive Learner Record

Brooks Doherty
[email protected]

Bow Valley College’s approach to developing and implementing Competency Based Education and Authentic Assessment. “This session is intended for those that have started to develop competency-based education and assessment models at their college or institution. The first session outcome is to share the CBE development, implementation, and assessment strategies of Bow Valley College, in Calgary, Alberta. The second outcome is to create a greater network of shared understanding of best practices for CBE implementation.
This session will outline Bow Valley College’s journey towards implementing CBE both in the credit and non-credit programming areas. We will introduce the program and course design principles the college has adopted, including rigorous competency curriculum mapping to performance criteria; a systematic, team-based, phased development approach, scalable assessment strategies, flexible learning models, and the CBE faculty model.

tags:  Competency Based Education; Disrupting Traditional Education

Angela Ripley
[email protected]

Louise Edwards

There are many challenges for faculty and staff when developing and piloting effective competency-based self-directed undergraduate curriculum during traditional terms. One challenge is that students have difficulty adapting and adjusting their learning style from a traditional lecture-based course experience to a self-directed competency-based experience in the same traditional 16-week term. The goal of this round table is to share the concept of a pilot program that delivered an undergraduate competency-based self-directed business course to over 150 students. Leaders of the discussion will share lessons learned with relation to the student experience, faculty development, and role of faculty as coaches, curriculum design, and communication about the course with colleagues and student support services. The desired outcomes is to share experiences and generate ideas for improving the student experience for future course offerings similar to the featured piloted course.

tags: competency-based education; self-directed undergraduate curriculum

Andy Lynch
[email protected]

Leila Samii
[email protected]

Chris Cooper
[email protected]

Josh Becker
[email protected]

When embarking on the CBE journey, no one should go it alone. From students, staff, faculty, and administrators, services and supports are needed to help with navigating the road ahead. In this session, we will explore how these four key stakeholder groups can best be supported during the CBE journey. Learn best practices for preparing students for the academic experience and receive strategies for supporting them throughout the student lifecycle. Discover ways to recruit and develop the right staff to support CBE learners and gather resources for training and empowering faculty on the CBE pedagogy. Determine resources available to administrators as they seek to lead CBE efforts on campus. Choose to benefit from the collective wisdom of the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) by attending this session and then connect, share, and innovate alongside our member institutions as we advance CBE as a high-quality alternative to today’s higher education model.

tags: Stakeholder support, best practices, C-BEN, Competency-Based Education Network, Quality

Charla Long
[email protected]

This session will provide an overview of Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs), a scenario-based multiple-choice testing format that is well-suited for assessing soft skill competencies and practical judgment in situations that do not have a by-the-book answer. While the use of SJTs in training shares some commonalities with the use of case studies, ratings from career field subject matter experts (SMEs) are used to provide students with immediate structured feedback. The session will provide examples from two very distinct training contexts: training of new Red Cross volunteers and training of experienced mental health providers. Each step in the SJT development process (critical incident generation and scenario editing, response option generation and refinement, and scoring based on SME judgment) will be described, with examples and tips for test developers on each step. The intended audience for this how-to session is instructors and curriculum developers without prior experience with this methodology.

tags: Situational Judgment Test (SJTs); scenario-based tests; soft skills; competent

Laura Barron

Imelda Aguilar

[email protected]

Dr. Lonnie L. Howard led the Lamar Institute of Technology (LIT) to a Shared Vision of Growth Excellence in 2016. From fall 2016 to fall of 2019, the Institute saw a 46% enrollment growth (credit headcount). Under President Howard’s leadership the Institute has created a new strategic plan; has excelled toward achieving TSUS’ Vision 2020 metrics; and aligned to 60x30TX.

Attendees will learn how two new-to-their-role administrators at LIT began revisiting an existing experiential learning policy on the way to competency based education. The Dean of Student and Academic Success, and Executive Vice President and Provost used a Perkins Leadership Grant sub-recipient award to move “From No! To Yes.” This walk with faculty took more than nine months to create a culture of inquiry and action. Find how prior learning assessment was our first step in faculty buy-in for competency based education. This has led to overall increased enrollment targets of adult learners and incumbent workers for faculty who have low course enrollments.

tags:  journey; discovery; action ”

Kerry Mix
[email protected]

REAL is an acronym I created which stands for: Realistic Encouraging Available Listen. All of these characteristics are key in supporting students.

I will discuss the importance of making a personal connection with your students. Provide tips and strategies for those who support student services and work directly with students. Also, will describe various methods of how to equip students with various resources that they may utilize and lead to success. Emphasis the importance of examining the entire components the impact a student’s ability to succeed. Ventilate the significance of regular contact and tactics to gaining the trust and confidence from your students to lead them to success.

In addition, I will share the success of the Accelerated Programmer Training (APT) Program to show how I applied these techniques and the overall impact; it tripled the graduation rate for the Computer Studies Department at Austin Community College and lead to receiving the Texas Higher Education Star Award in December 2017. Furthermore, how I applied the same or similar techniques to the CB (Coordinating Board) Cohort and helped raise the graduation rate from 7.9% for the 2015 CB Cohort to 15.9% for the 2016 CB Cohort.

tags: #REALconnection; #StudentSuccess; #CB_EductionStudentSuccess

Judy L. Arriaga, MBA
[email protected]

The comparison analyses key student success metrics including student enrollment, retention and graduation rates, as well as other data points such as time-to-degree, cost-to-degree and student debt scenarios for both a CBE program and a comparable traditional program. The findings of this presentation suggest that the CBE program results in higher performance across all key performance indicators for the adult learner population. The results also support the notion that institutions should expect a competencybased program of this type to break-even by the fifth year of operation and a strong long-term financial outlook. While further research is needed, this presentation adds to the limited body of knowledge to understand both the return on investment for both student and institutions alike.

tags: ROI; CBE;Data; Outcomes

Carlos Rivers

[email protected]

Competency-based learning in many different forms are now being implemented in many universities. As programs grow and mature they face challenges not only of making financial returns but also in generating student enthusiasm about the competency-approach. This enthusiasm may be for its flexibility or ease of completion. But ultimately, as the kinds of students entering these programs broadens, there will need to be greater focus on helping the student understand and become a self-directed, autonomous learner. To get a student to that stage it will take skilled faculty helping students either learn or apply these skills in an academic setting. In this session some strategies for this process will be forwarded along with interactive conversation with session attendees.

tags: integrated education, autonomous learning, networked learning

Craig Schieber
[email protected]

The development and implementation of a quality competency-based (CB) academic or workforce program is never an easy undertaking, even for the most-experienced institutions of higher education (IHE). Selecting a program for conversion to the CB format, forming a program development team, identifying and funding essential program development resources, and simply convincing colleagues of the merit of CB are just a few of the steps in this process that can be complicated, time consuming and, if not executed correctly, prevent a new CB program from ever being successfully launched. The purpose of this session is to discuss strategies for simplifying the process of CBE program development and implementation through multi-institutional collaboration and mentoring. Specifically, we will begin by discussing our experience collaborating with and/or mentoring other IHEs in the development of CBE programs that emphasize student equity, access and inclusion. Particular emphasis will be placed on four regional symposiums that we are currently organizing, under the auspices of a Perkins Grant, to provide information and mentoring on the development of CB programs. Next, we will identify and describe resources that are available to IHEs interested in collaborating or receiving mentoring to develop their own CBE programs. And, finally, we will conclude by opening the session to questions and answers.

Kevin Peek

[email protected]

EPCC and TSTC will present the frameworks that have been used to develop their CBE courses. The presentation includes a demonstration of the process of developing competencies, sub-competencies, formative and summative assessments that lend themselves to an adaptive learning path.

tags: CBE Blueprint; designing competencies; mapping CBE

Myshie M. Pagel
[email protected] Gena Jean

With the expansion of CBE as a viable alternative to traditional instruction, there has been innovative methods on how CBE is delivered. One of the areas that vary from program to program is how teachers are utilized. This panel is comprised of representatives from institutions of higher education that offer a variety of delivery methods for CBE. Each representative will provide a quick introduction about their current program and the faculty model utilized in their programs. This will be followed up with an in depth discussion on methods used for faculty development, common challenges, and support services offered. Finally, the panel will open it up to the audience for questions and discussions. Participants in this session will gain insight into the roles and responsibilities of teachers in current CBE programs, will learn about various approaches to faculty development, support, and some of the struggles that faculty/instructors may face and how to potentially overcome them. Instruction

George Swindell
[email protected]

Dr. Emma Miller – South Texas College ;

Gena Jean – Texas State Technical College ;

George Swindell – Texas A&M University – Commerce ;

Dr. Susan Wegmann – University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

The purpose of coaching within higher education is to assist students in achieving their purpose as it relates to their educational goals. Helping students explore what their purpose and objectives are provides coaches with a better understanding of how to best serve students. A study from Stanford University School of Education suggests that undergraduates who receive coaching to include guidance on setting goals and time management, are more likely to remain in college and graduate (Bettinger and Baker, 2011). Since coaching is personal, the student-coach sessions help the coach identify students’ goals and potential challenges that may prevent students from staying on task throughout their educational journey. Coaching students helps them to have a persistence towards degree completion. The concept of coaching focuses on outcomes and emphasizes self-directed learning, goal setting, and action planning (International Coaching Federation, 2012). It is a more proactive and reactive approach to guiding students through the various challenges that are inevitable throughout their college life.

The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (UMHB) is a very traditional brick-and-mortal school that has implemented two fully accredited CBE bachelor’s degree programs in Organizational Leadership and Nursing (RN to BSN). The MyWay at UMHB CBE degree programs are fully online, all-you-can-master, six-month subscriptions. Additionally, there is a teacher’s alternative certification program that is strictly CBE online. The Student Success Coach assists/coaches students in all three programs.

Tesha Graham
[email protected]

Bow Valley College is developing innovative approaches to program and course curriculum design guided by adult learning and Competency-Based Education (CBE) principles. The College is partnering with stakeholders and industry professionals to develop verified and trusted CBE programming, offer industry-recognized Micro-credentials, and augment assessment and learner experience through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and virtual reality powered work simulations.

This session will outline the College’s strategy for engaging and supporting faculty, staff, and learners throughout the CBE design and implementation process, illustrated through vignettes of the “Lived Experiences” of faculty, staff, and leaders towards developing and implementing CBE at BVC.

The presentation will capitalize on creating an engaging and dynamic round table discussion in which participants will be engaged with short tabletop activities, and group discussion.

This session is intended for those that have started to develop competency-based education and assessment models at their college or institution. This session’s outcome will be to engage the shared experiences of the participants in the audience. This round table discussion will be held to capitalize on the practical ‘lessons learned’ implementing competency-based education and authentic assessment. To provide context to this topic, a discussion will be facilitated within the following areas:

• Engaging employers, expert practitioners, and other stakeholders;

• Identifying meaningful competencies;

• Technological solutions for scalable and authentic assessments; Launching AI, VR, and gamification simulations as authentic assessment tools;

• Creating and implementing personalized learning paths and learning environments within rigorous competency mapping;

• Creating a shared understanding and developmental process for competency-based education and assessment

tags: CBE Lessons Learned, Scalable Assessments

Angela Ripley
[email protected]

Louise Edwards

As leaders moving our programs toward CBE, we want our students and faculty to experience all the benefits that CBE has to offer, and we want them to experience them quickly. The challenge to achieving that is the sometimes painstaking process of getting everyone on board and on the same page at the same time. The ugly truth of change in any higher education institution is that people accept change at different rates, and most of the time it feels too slow for program leaders.
To address these complex challenges presented by this seemingly simple change to CBE, you need a way to activate, cultivate and orchestrate momentum across your campus. During this session, we’ll outline specific strategies that we’ve seen work at a variety of institutions to create momentum across campus for the change to CBE.
Based on our experience working with numerous CBE transitions, we’ll outline success cases and provide interactive experiences that will help you activate, cultivate and orchestrate change momentum for CBE across your campus.

tags: Getting Started; Institutional Readiness; Change Management

Holly Whitaker
[email protected]
Mike Moore,
Alison Winzeler

South Texas College in collaboration with Austin Community College developed a fully online, Competency-Based Education (CBE) program for the Bachelor of Applied Technology in Computer and Information Technologies (BAT-CIT). In this session, the following courses will be demonstrated: CITP 3302 Advanced Networking and CITP 4350 Advanced Computer Programming. Through these live course demonstrations, we will explore course design, competencies, course policies, assessments, learning outcomes, online faculty-student interaction, and rubrics. After attending this session, participants will be able to differentiate between a traditional and CBE program through real-life examples, identify methods of developing project-based assessments, and examine strategies to maintain student success in online CBE courses.

Nicholas Hinojosa
[email protected]

Dr. Meng-Hung Wu,

Gabriel Viera,

Saeed Molki

During 2019, the Master´s in Positive Education, a postgraduate degree, was offered as a pilot program to students at Universidad Tecmilenio. Each course in the program was taught in a self-directed format with the use of an online learning platform under the Project-Oriented Learning (POL) approach. The innovative feature of MEDU consisted of a tripartite competency assessment model entirely independent from the professor consisting of self-assessment, co-evaluation and blind hetero-evaluation (by a group of external evaluators) through a binary rubric.

At the end of the pilot program, we found that without the intervention of the professor was largely successful, since it effectively measured the scope of the students’ competencies. However, while self-assessment and blind hetero-evaluation were carried out smoothly and successfully, we found this not to be the case for co-evaluation, as student participants showed a strong preference for the traditional model where the professor is the sole authoritative figure in matters of evaluation and feedback. This innovation in the assessment model allowed us to verify that it is possible, at least for postgraduate courses, to evaluate students by competencies through the project-based learning approach without the intervention of the professor.

tags: Assessment; Binary rubrics; Positive education

Zeida Guajardo-Garza
[email protected]

A truly learner-centered competency-based education program promotes high expectations, respect of diversity, clarity in learning, student engagement, clear feedback, and collaboration. Competency-based education is fundamentally different from traditional learning models primarily due to its focus on content mastery rather than time-to-learn. Enacting collaborative processes around curriculum development and implementation for both new programming and conversions of existing programs is critical to successful CBE models in higher education. It requires a clear vision, effective communication, broad collaboration, detailed planning and implementation, sufficient resources and ongoing feedback. Merging individual ideas into a collaborative vision requires an ebb and flow of change in order to adjust, regroup and continue forward. In this session, learn more about the collaborative efforts occurring in Marian University’s MPath Flexible Program around inclusive CBE program development and implementation where our focus is on providing opportunities for students with diverse backgrounds to find success via flexible scheduling, regular, substantive interaction, and rich formative feedback.

tags: Collaborative Program Development

Polly Manske
[email protected]

Gina Possin

Alan Johnson, J.D.

Dr. W. Alan Dixon, Sr.

An unusual formula of university-industry collaboration on CBE curriculum development: the process of co-designing the skills-based certificate program on sports management between Universidad Tecmilenio (MX) and Club de Fútbol Rayados (premier LigaMX soccer club). This session will cover insights on how both institutions envisioned the program, a conversation on skill-mapping techniques, and an assessment of the chosen pedagogy centered on two different audiences: current undergrad students and professionals continuing their education.

tags: CBE; design

Roberto Juarez-Garza
[email protected]

As online course catalogs expand and the demand for access increases, managing assessments for courses becomes more challenging. Creating engaging assessments is challenge enough, but how do you grade them? How do you make sure students understand what you expect them to do? A successful rubric helps you to use common guidelines to quickly grade assignments and provide feedback. The next step is how do you create a rubric? Do you start with the rubric, the assessment or somewhere in between? Since typically assessments are created first, we will start with the assessment. From there, we will decide whether a rubric is needed, then walk thru the process of creating one. Please bring an assessment that needs a rubric, and we will analyze the assessment and decide how robust a rubric is needed, and create a rubric together.

tags: Rubrics; Course Development; Program Design; Assessment; Evaluation; Metrics

Laura Sheehy

[email protected]

With several partner institutions and educational organizations such as the American Council on Education (ACE), Council for Adult Experiential Learning, and the Southern Association of Colleges and School Commission on Colleges, Eastfield College has led a multi-year faculty and staff development initiative designed to increase, apply, and share learning in the evaluation and awarding of credit for experiential learning. Committed to supporting the state’s 60x30TX goals of increasing the number of individuals age 25-34 that complete a degree, the institution believes that increasing knowledge and expertise among faculty in the development of crosswalks that recognize various competencies from experiential learning as well as sharing replicable training outcomes with other institutions throughout the state will result in increased access to accelerated pathways toward degree completion for students with prior learning and experience in the area of study. This session will introduce attendees to Blended Pathways and the faculty evaluation process in the development and replication of models in CIT, Automotive Technology, Autobody Technology, HVAC, and Criminal Justice recognizing prior learning such as third-party certifications. The session will also include an invitation to participants to connect with other faculty evaluators as mentors through the project regarding innovating strategies in replicating Blended Pathways for implementation at their own institution and initial steps in the development of similar competency-based education pathways.

tags: pathways; credit for prior learning; faculty development; competency-based education; industry certifications

Tricia Thomas-Anderson
[email protected]

This presentation will cover effective digital marketing strategies performed for our new competency-based Criminal Justice program through social-media. The analysis focuses on two prominent social media platforms; Facebook and LinkedIn. These leading social media sites are two of five that account for more than 3 billion active monthly users (Pew Research Center, 2019). Presenter will go under the hood and showcase key strategies to implement on both platforms, and answer a wide range of questions including how to manage campaign objectives effectively, filter selection strategies, media and content placement and learning from campaign analytics. The results generated over 5000 direct link clicks and over 400 direct leads for the program for future terms. Enrollment also jumped for this new program from 6 students to over 100 students in just one year. When implemented correctly, higher education social media marketing can enhance prospective student engagement and lead generation for programs that in turn can impact overall enrollment numbers.

tags: Digital; Marketing; Recruiting; Adult learners; Ads

Carlos Rivers

[email protected]

Attendees will be introduced to the CBE model and shown how it was successfully implemented in the online program of the GIS Department at Austin Community College.

CBE Model: Advancement Upon Mastery, Learning Objectives, Meaningful Assessments, Individual Support, Learning Outcomes, Advantages

Successful Implementation Steps: Competency Statements, Program Offerings, Competency Mapping, Assessments and Feedback, Digital Delivery, Teaching Techniques, Student Engagement, Accessibility

Faculty are encouraged to bring an assessment with related course materials for an interactive workshop. The presenter will step through the process of converting course materials to align with the CBE model.

Interactive Workshop: Real-life Example, Attendee Focused Competency Mapping Practice

The goal of this session is to help faculty improve student success in their specific course.

tags: CBE; Online; Digital; Video Conferencing; Equity; Inclusion; Google; Blackboard; WebEx; Hangouts Meet; Accessibility

Stephanie Long, GISP
[email protected]

Implementing a big change like a shift to competency based education is within reach! But how do we combat project killers like lack of time, scope creep, poor communication, and both inertia and unchecked momentum? The presenter will share tested tools to assemble the right team, an actionable plan, and an implementation process to drive transformational change.

tags: transformational change; change management; project planning

Joann Kozyrev
[email protected]