Defining Competency-Based Education

Ross Woods, Oct. 2022

The core idea of Competency-Based Education (CBE) is that:

  1. outcomes of an educational program are stated in language,
  2. they state what students must be able to do, and
  3. these statments define the program.

The terminology is not uniform. Other terms for competency-based are outcomes-based, proficiency-based, mastery-based, performance-based, skills-based, and standards-based. Competencies can also be called objectives. Other terms for education are higher education, training, training and assessment, instruction, and learning.1

Similarly, there is no definitive definition. “In practice, competency-based learning can take a wide variety of forms from state to state or school to school—there is no single model or universally used approach.”2

A few issues simply confuse discussion. First, CBE spans various sectors, from K-12 schools, to vocational training, to professional education in universities, and to purely academic programs. Second, CBE proponents cannot claim a monopoly on some program features. Traditional higher education units typically have a purpose statement, which is a de facto outcome statement even if it is not as carefully defined as CBE educators expect. Traditional campus programs often allow a level of choice. At program level, the system of semester hour credits has been a way of creating options and choice. At the level of the individual unit, students may frequently choose and define major learning tasks, such as essays.

Even without a normative definition, however, these aspects of CBE are probably essential:

  1. Outcomes are expressed as something that the student must do. For example, traditional higher education might say that “The student should be aware of …” In CBE, the competency might be expressed as “identify and respond appropriately to any of the following if relevant: ….”
  2. Any learning activities are intended to help students achieve those outcomes.
  3. Students are assessed based on outcome statements, not the amount of time that they spend in class.
  4. Outcomes are commensurate with the degree level.
    1. At higher levels, they are quite abstract and require critical thought. For example, students might be required to choose and apply one or more theoretical models, create new theoretical models, analyse and assess contexts or risks, and innovate according to context. Done well, these have the potential to encourage creativity and exploration.3
    2. At lower vocational levels, outcomes are quite proceduralized and are statements of detailed, predetermined expectations. The consequence is that they tend to limit the amount of learning available.4
    3. Outcomes are appropriate for the kind of degree. They may be theoretical for academic programs, or applied for vocational and professional courses. This has an interesting implication in vocational and professional courses; the theory and applied component can be integrated directly and seamlessly, so that there are no separate theory and practicum units.
  5. All content is related as directly as possible to the outcomes. “Content” may be information that must be understood or applied, or different kinds of conceptual skills.
  6. Outcomes are normally disclosed to students.
  7. Good performance in one outcome does not compensate for poor performance in another.
  8. Assessors must often possess the competencies that they assess. (The most common exception is multiple choice quizzes.) In other cases, an academic degree in the same field is deemed to be adequate.

Other factors

Different institutions can define other aspects of CBE differently.

  1. CBE programs can be individualized (or “personalized”). Students follow a customized pathway to outcome achievement, but are not part of a cohort with which they can interact. The customized pathway approach also affects the business model because it presumes a one-to-one student-instructor ratio for teaching. Individualized pathways are often self-paced so the student might progress more quickly or slowly. These kinds of programs are often advertised with the attraction that students can finish in shorter periods of time and thus pay less.
  2. Outcomes can be expressed in different ways, either as tasks that students must do, or as competency standards that may then be stated in different tasks that vary according to context.
  3. Outcome statements may also have performance criteria.
  4. In education for the professions and vocations, a qualification often equals the job description of a graduate. That is, students are trained for a specific goal, regardless of the level of the qualification. The requirements of the job description are often equivalent to the list of competencies for the qualification.
  5. In some cases, the process is as important as the product. For example, some skills must be achieved in a minimum time; simply doing the job very well is not good enough. In these cases, processes need to be included in task definitions or performance criteria.
  6. As the purpose is to demonstrate outcomes, there is little or no difference between Recognition of Prior Learning (evaluation of previous experience for credit) and instruction. Students with suitable experience simply fast-track to the demonstration of skills.
  7. Defining credit is often difficult, and this affects qualifications that are defined in terms of credit totals, such as semester hours. After all, credit is only a system of modularization.
    1. The US credit hour system is based on time taken for the average student to acquire competencies. However, very capable students or students with suitable experience might take much less time to demonstrate that they have those skills.
    2. Outside the US higher education system, it is possible to define a qualification as a set of competencies without using units of credit.
  8. Some national qualification frameworks (e.g. Australian Qualification Framework) use cognitive descriptors to define outcome levels. “Cognitive descriptors” are descriptions of specific kinds of thinking appropriate to an educational outcome, but they are notoriously difficult to interpret.
  9. The system depends on procedures to interpret outcome statements and assessments. These may include detailed rubrics, reviews, moderation or “validation.”
  10. Institutions may use rubrics to determine grades. Otherwise, units are simply pass/fail.
  11. One item of evidence can apply to multiple competency standards.

Alternative definitions

The United States Department of Education (USDE)

The USDE defined a CBE program as a program that “organizes academic content according to competencies (what a student knows and can do).” The same letter required that programs express credit in terms of semester hours, whether or not they also express programs as competencies.5

Levine and Patrick

Levine and Patrick (2019) defined Competency-Based Education as follows:

1. Students are empowered daily to make important decisions about their learning experiences, how they will create and apply knowledge, and how they will demonstrate their learning.
2. Assessment is a meaningful, positive, and empowering learning experience for students that yields timely, relevant, and actionable evidence.
3. Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs.
4. Students progress based on evidence of mastery, not seat time.
5. Students learn actively using different pathways and varied pacing.
6. Strategies to ensure equity for all students are embedded in the culture, structure, and pedagogy of schools and education systems.
7. Rigorous, common expectations for learning (knowledge, skills, and dispositions) are explicit, transparent, measurable, and transferable.6

This definition is infused with ideology such as students’ right to decide, empowerment, and students’ rights to individualized education in learning needs, pathways and pacing. It is doubtful whether the ideology belongs in the definition as if it is essential to all CBE. Some of this ideology is not always compatible with cohort-based study, and, in practice, educators must differentiate between seeing it as a useful set of approaches for some circumstances or as an unrealistic version of political correctness.

Australian Government Department of Education and Training

The Australian Government Department of Education and Training defined it as:

a method of training that focuses on a learner’s ability to receive, respond to and process information in order to achieve competency. It is geared towards the attainment and demonstration of skills to meet industry-defined standards, rather than to a learner’s achievement relative to that of others.
Learner progress in a competency-based program is not time-based. As soon as a learner achieves a required competency, they can move to the next. In this way, learners can complete training in their own time and at their own pace.
…
Competency-based assessment is the process of collecting evidence and making judgments about whether a person has achieved competency. It is sometimes termed a criterion-referenced process, because it involves people being assessed against fixed criteria or pre-determined benchmarks – such as those expressed in units of competency.7

An essential aspect of all CBE is that assessment is criterion-referenced. Another notable characteristics is the demonstration of workplace skills that meet industry-defined standards. Like Levine and Patrick, CBE is also defined as individually paced, which is made possible by individualization, but not always applicable to cohort-base instruction.

Western Governors University (WGU)

In the US, WGU is a pioneer of CBE, which it sees as an individualized self-paced process:

What is competency-based education? Simply put, it measures skills and learning rather than time spent in a classroom. Students progress through courses as soon as they can prove they’ve mastered the material, rather than advancing only when the semester or term ends. If you can learn faster, spend more time on schoolwork, or lean on knowledge you already have from previous work or school experience, you can accelerate through your courses.
… you can embark on a learning journey tailored exactly to your own knowledge—focusing on areas where you need more help and moving quickly through areas you already know or understand. In addition, faculty members are here to provide personalized, one-on-one learning support.8

University of Wisconsin System (UWS)

UWS defined CBE in almost exactly the same way as WGU:

Your progress through your coursework is based on your ability to prove you have mastered competencies—the skills, abilities, and knowledge required in an area of study. You do this by passing assessments after you’ve reviewed the learning resources. However long it takes you to master the material is unique to you.9

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU)

Despite being a prominent competency-based university, SNHU emphasizes the accessibility of its programs and does not make a prominent website statement on CBE. It does, however mention the “competency-based education (CBE) format that empowers you to complete projects and demonstrate skills, rather than taking scheduled online classes.”10 It also promotes “credit for prior learning (CPL)’.11

Steven Mintz

Mintz reviewed Paul LeBlanc’s view as practiced at Southern New Hampshire University, not in terms of its definition but in terms of its advantages:

[LeBlanc]champions a competency-based approach that replaces an emphasis on credit hours and grades with demonstrated mastery of essential knowledge and skills. Such an approach, he explains, has a number of virtues:
• It allows students to move in and out of college and across institutions without loss of credits.
• It recognizes learning that takes place outside the classroom, for example, in the military or the workforce.
• It supports the accumulation of nondegree certificates and certifications that can be stacked into degrees.
• It substitutes verified competencies for grades; a student either does or does not demonstrate competence.
A competency-based approach gives time-starved students greater flexibility because it does not have to be anchored in a rigid term schedule or a physical campus.12

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN)

The AACN defines CBE as “a system of instruction, assessment, feedback, self-reflection, and academic reporting that is based on students demonstrating that they have learned the knowledge, attitudes, motivations, self-perceptions, and skills expected of them as they progress through their education.”13

Conclusion

These definitions indicate two very different kinds of CBE programs:

 
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References

1. https://www.edglossary.org/competency-based-learning/ Viewed October 2, 2022.
2. https://www.edglossary.org/competency-based-learning/ Viewed October 2, 2022.
3. Many programs at higher levels are really systems of structured thinking.
4. This view of outcomes has given CBE a bad reputation in some higher education circles. Moreover, it can result in a weak view of theoretical knowledge, perhaps only as simple recall.
5. https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/auditreports/fy2016/a05p0013.pdf Viewed October 2, 2022.
6. Levine, Eliot and Susan Patrick. 2019. What Is Competency-Based Education? An Updated Definition The Aurora Institute, Vienna, VA. (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED604019.pdf)
7. Australian Government Department of Education and Training. “Fact Sheet: Competency-based Training.” https://www.myskills.gov.au/media/1776/back-to-basics-competency-based-training.pdf Viewed October 2, 2022.
8. Western Governors University. https://www.wgu.edu/student-experience/learning/how.html Viewed Oct 2, 2022.
9. University of Wisconsin System. 2019. “Competency-Based Education: What It Is, How It’s Different, and Why It Matters to You” Nov 26, 2019. https://flex.wisconsin.edu/stories-news/competency-based-education-what-it-is-how-its-different-and-why-it-matters-to-you/.
10. https://www.snhu.edu/about-us/college-for-america?vdir=collegeforamerica.org Viewed Oct 2, 2022.
11. https://www.snhu.edu/admission/transferring-credits/work-life-experience#/home Viewed Oct 2, 2022.
12. Mintz, Steven. 2022. “Is Competency-Based Education an Idea Whose Time Has Come?” March 7, 2022. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/competency-based-education-idea-whose-time-has-come.
13. https://www.aacnnursing.org/AACN-Essentials/Definition-of-Competency-Based-Education Viewed October 2, 2022.