{"id":1637,"date":"2015-03-16T11:00:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/?p=1637"},"modified":"2015-04-15T10:45:26","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T15:45:26","slug":"competency-based-direct-assessment-education-revolutionizing-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/competency-based-direct-assessment-education-revolutionizing-higher-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Capella\u2019s President Discusses New Paradigm in Higher Ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Competency-based education, and direct assessment in particular, is an innovation with the potential to greatly increase access to and success in higher education. Capella University didn\u2019t invent the idea, but the university has been at the forefront of its development (FlexPath<\/a> is Capella\u2019s direct assessment model). And the advantages of competency-based approaches<\/a> have caught the attention of teachers, students, and education experts around the world.<\/p>\n

Capella President Scott Kinney recently took a few moments to answer some questions about this innovation\u2014and how it benefits students.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q. In the past, you\u2019ve described this approach to learning\u2014direct assessment\u2014as disruptive. Why?<\/h4>\n

A. Competency-based direct assessment<\/a> is<\/em> disruptive\u2014in a positive way. It\u2019s changing the landscape for students and for society. As a delivery model, it\u2019s disruptive because it breaks away from the unit of measure that has shaped higher education for more than a century, the credit hour.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q. What\u2019s a credit hour?<\/h4>\n

A. Here\u2019s the short story: In 1906, the Carnegie Foundation created the first standardized way of calculating payments for teacher pensions\u2014the Carnegie Unit. This measure of teaching effort came to be known as the credit hour. Within a couple of decades, the credit hour had become the currency by which most everything in higher education was measured and managed.<\/p>\n

Now, the credit hour is fine for certain things, like figuring out how many classrooms you need or how many teachers you should hire, but it\u2019s not a good way to measure learning. You can use it to measure time spent in the classroom, but it doesn\u2019t tell you about how much learning actually takes place. And it doesn\u2019t really tell employers what you learned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q. So what is the main difference between a credit-hour and competency-based direct assessment format?<\/h4>\n

A. In a direct assessment program, the number of hours logged in the classroom is irrelevant. The entire concept is built around competency, the ability to demonstrate skills that employers need and want. We start with the outcomes\u2014what students need to know\u2014and those outcomes shape the program.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q. How does that change the learning landscape?<\/h4>\n

A. Let\u2019s take an MBA as an example. For an MBA we ask, what are the professional and academic outcomes that are expected? What would need to be mastered to deliver those outcomes? What related skills are necessary to prove proficiency in an area of study? And what would allow us to assess a student\u2019s mastery of those competencies? The tools we use combine theory and practice. We call them authentic assessments<\/a>. And once they\u2019re established, Capella\u2019s faculty shapes a curriculum around those assessments to help students learn, grow, and ultimately complete them as efficiently as possible. Everything is built from the ground up based on the outcomes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q. What are the advantages of this approach?<\/h4>\n

A. The primary advantage is flexibility. You can do your work in the middle of the night. You can do all of your work for that week on Tuesday. Plus, it\u2019s all active engagement. There is almost no element of the Capella model where you\u2019re sitting and listening to something for a block of time. We\u2019re actually even fairly conservative in our use of video just for that reason.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q. Do competency-based direct assessment models work for all kinds of students?<\/h4>\n

A. It makes common sense for anybody, but the direct assessment model is especially powerful for working adults. Their schedules are busy and unpredictable. They don’t have any time to waste. Working adults often have experience and expertise that can be applied directly to courses. With the direct assessment model, they can tap that expertise, demonstrate their skills through an authentic assessment, and move on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q. Education costs keep going up. Is competency-based direct assessment education cheaper?<\/h4>\n

A. It depends. But generally speaking, the competency model is also good for affordability. Why should adults have to pay for instruction on what they already know? It doesn’t make any sense. A direct assessment model may allow you to complete your degree in much less time, at a much lower cost.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Q. How does competency-based education benefit job seekers and employers alike?<\/h4>\n

A. If you start with the program outcomes, define the competencies, and make sure that faculty is consistently assessing mastery, then when somebody has completed that program she can say to an employer, “Here are the skills I’ve mastered.\u201d That tells an employer a lot more than saying you have a 3.21 GPA in psychology from some institution.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Learn more about Capella\u2019s approach to <\/em>competency-based education<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>direct assessment<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Competency-based direct assessment programs are revolutionizing learning and benefitting students, says Capella University President Scott Kinney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":1670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[73],"tags":[97,53,25,135,62],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1637"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1664,"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions\/1664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgwww.capella.edu\/blogs\/cublog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}