The person held responsible for making it happen will usually have a different perspective than the people looking in from the outside. So I chuckled at Katie Varatta’s blog, “Teaching in a Competency-Based Education Environment”. Of course the general reaction to the idea of all students passing through their education with mastery of their learning targets is a positive one! As Ms. Varatta says, though, the teachers (where the rubber meets the road, so to speak) ask some very good questions. First, my ponderings and questions… then the ways technology integration might be able to offer solutions. Competency Based Education (CBE) aims to individualize learning targets to each student so he can grow from current understanding (where he is now) through a learning goal. The proposition is that the student is the center of his education and his learning goals are personalized to him. Also, in CBE, the student has choices for demonstrating what they’ve learned - assumably it can be performance tasks, tests, presentations, projects. Ms Varatta ostensibly dealt with the questions from teachers of needing to write multiple lesson plans and managing all the levels. She indicated that multiple lesson plans were not necessary and that logistics would help manage the levels. Admittedly, the answer left me a little dubious. One way I can see technology assisting in the “logistics” is in the most basic elements of tracking of learning goals. Leaving aside my ponderings about who makes the learning targets (are they like standards? State mandated? Truly decided by the student?) and who provides the curriculum for those standards… let’s assume there’s a web-based program where a data base can be accessed and a set of learning goals assigned to each student. Teacher, student, and parents could all have access to facilitate a team effort. The teacher could update the progress, or even better, the student herself could do it, and the parents could have anytime access. Proponents of CBE point out that students pass through learning targets and ideally, would not even be tracked by grade level. Again, leaving aside the massive overhaul of the U.S. system of education that would need to happen to truly achieve this goal, I wanted to examine the idea of mastering one learning goal before progressing to another. One website points out that in the In traditional school settings, students can move through grade levels even if they only understand 60 percent of the material. From my experience, social promotion in the elementary and middle schools means that some students are progressing onto more difficult material with even less of 60% understanding of material. A 5th grade student only understands 55% of the math concepts presented that year, gets to 6th grade, and is expected to begin on gaining proficiency in 6th grade math concepts. The label of being a “5th grader” or a “6th grader” determine what learning goals, or standards, a student will be given to tackle. There is no information other than a final grade from the previous year passed on to the next teacher. The new teacher spends weeks or months just figuring out the gaps in each student’s learning. Technology could help by having a database that tracks individualized learning targets. The information would follow the student and she could pick up where she left off. Realistically, this would also mean that the curriculum, lessons, and some evaluations would be at least partially computer-based. This summer I will be teaching in a credit recovery program (summer school). I will be using a program called APEX. The learning goals, curriculum, quizzes, activities, and exam for a course are all accessible through this self-paced, web-based program. Students only progress to the next unit after having “passed” the previous unit. The administrator for the school site sets the level at which students pass through each unit - in this case 70%. The teacher has access to all the materials and can even modify the requirements for each student individually (ie: include or exclude certain parts or teacher-grade or teacher-pass a section). Students can work as quickly as they want and retake portions until they achieve mastery. I am interested to work with this program to see it in action. It could be a viable option for technology integration for CBE.
6 Comments
6/6/2017 07:16:40 pm
I agree about schools having to change the way they group students by age not mastery of skills. It would be a hard road to pave being so much money is spent to keep everyone on the same page across the USA.
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james
6/7/2017 04:07:03 pm
Nancy,
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Dan
6/7/2017 03:39:02 pm
Nancy,
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Nai Saelee
6/7/2017 04:07:57 pm
Hi Nancy,
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Nancy,
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Patrick
6/7/2017 09:59:03 pm
I'm really excited for a follow up blog about your experience with APEX. I have tried taking courses like that as a student (Bio Psychology, totally online with competency based units) and it was miserable for me. I was not motivated enough to pass these units, so I am interested to see if this program offers better engagement incentives.
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