A growing number of universities and colleges are adopting competency-based education to reach an increasingly diverse cadre of potential students, a change that means new challenges and opportunities for teaching professionals.
With CBE, students learn at their own pace, allowing them to spend less time on subjects they understand—such as topics they know from work or prior classes—and more time on difficult or new matters. This approach complements non-traditional students including full-time employees, individuals tending to parents and children, or those working multiple jobs.
Already garnering interest from a growing number of secondary education institutions looking to reach these prospective students, differentiate themselves and provide a less costly alternative to conventional teaching styles, CBE's significance today is only growing. Drivers include the global pandemic; the overall economy; multi-generational housing growth; the surge in entrepreneurship, freelancing and self-employment, plus pushback from some consumers against the cost of higher-ed (see Fierce Education, "Alarming Rate of Students Question Value of Degree").
Watch the curve
Last year, 51% of institutions had adopted CBE, with another 23% reporting interest in this approach, according to a 2019 American Institutes for Research study. In addition, 11% of those surveyed offered at least one full CBE program, the institute said. Only 15% expressed no interest in CBE, the report found.
The primary reason secondary educational institutions have for adopting CBE is to increase enrollment – primarily of nontraditional students, cited by 57%. Secondly, at 54%, was the opportunity to improve completion rates, followed closely at 53% by enhancing workforce readiness, the AIR survey determined.
Faculty changes
Unlike traditional classroom-led instruction, whether held in a physical or virtual room, student-paced education requires changes in how faculty teach, experts in the field acknowledged. In part, that's because faculty takes on multiple roles.
In addition to teaching, they are subject matter experts, a "guide on the side," and mentors, said George Swindell, assistant professional faculty at Texas A&M University-Commerce, during an AIR webinar.
"When I first started in 2014 as a faculty member in our CBE program at A&M Commerce I wore one of every single hat you can think of, from overseeing our learning management software to working with new instructors to being an academic advisor to some of our students," he said. "It took that kind of modality when we first started the program. However, as we've grown a lot of those responsibilities have been shifted to specific individuals and now, we see a little bit more of your traditional roles of faculty and what their responsibilities are. But even there, with CBE, it's vastly different than your traditional."
Typically, there's a linear approach: Faculty adhere to a calendar, testing schedule and concern over seat time, whereas CBE does not consider seat-time and whereas one student may be finishing a course within a week, another may take weeks to finish the same coursework, Swindell said.
"That's where the 'guide on the side' comes into play," he said. "When it comes to being the sage on the stage, it's almost impossible when you have such an asynchronous approach to education."
Multiple approaches
Universities are taking different approaches to CBE.
Northern Arizona University (NAU), for example, opted to create a separate organization for Personalized Learning, its CBE program. Located within the university's Extended Campuses organization, the self-paced learning offering features bachelor’s degrees in computer information technology, liberal arts, management, and nursing, along with multiple minors and master's degrees in computer tech or nursing.
Rasmussen College, which hosts an open CBE faculty meeting every Monday morning, has an overall deadline for course-work completion but allows students to create their own calendar for workloads. Students may supplement CBE courses with self-directed assessments, empowering them to check-out courses they already may be able to pass, for a lower fee.