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Competency-Based Education

Competency-based education (CBE) describes instructional programming designed to guide students through progressive levels of demonstrated mastery in order to receive course credit, rather than credit awarded based on semester completion. These programs are usually student-paced, not bound by traditional semesters, and offer the potential for cost and time savings for students. This entry provides an overview of the origins and growth of CBE and then addresses the understanding of curriculum as the institution’s broader academic plan for student success, encompassing faculty; course development (specifically the design, sequence, and assessment of competencies); program delivery considerations; and redesigned student services essential for CBE.

Origins and Growth

CBE methods can be traced to historical apprenticeship models, and they were specifically introduced in the United States through federally funded pilot programs to train elementary teachers. These early programs included several features found in the latest CBE construct, including specified sequences of competencies to be mastered and the modularization of instruction. More fundamentally, those programs established the definition of CBE: that the learner must demonstrate mastery or attainment of specified criteria to progress through the program. In this model, the student earns credit for the course by mastering the defined competency rather than completion of the semester term with an average passing score.

A small number of colleges and universities employed CBE models through the 1970s and 1980s, but CBE programs were difficult to expand on a large scale in face-to-face formats, requiring significant institutional resources to track and assess individual students as they progressed. This limitation was overcome by the rapid development of distance learning. The growth and acceptance of online learning as a valid instructional delivery method expanded the options for CBE, allowing students to learn at their own pace through clear, institutionally charted pathways that could be more easily accessed by students and administered by faculty. By promoting their programs as more focused on student attainment than seat time, institutions such as Western Governors University and Southern New Hampshire University refined their CBE models in 2012 and have grown to reach hundreds of thousands of students with CBE models spanning a wide variety of educational disciplines. Accreditors, too, have taken notice of the growth of CBE programs, as well as the accompanying challenges, and by 2013 established formal processes for institutions to follow when planning and implementing competency programs. Proposed CBE programs must be submitted in advance and approved before they are offered to students, and institutions must demonstrate the capacity to provide the appropriate services to support self-paced education.

Students

CBE programs are attractive to potential students because they offer the possibility for students to advance more quickly through the courses in a program than semester-based methods. Some institutions even offer subscription pricing to allow students to progress at no additional cost as they advance from course to course. Competency programs also attract students with prior experience in the subject matter who are now seeking college credit. For example, individuals with computer coding skills developed in the workplace may accelerate by demonstrating mastery of introductory or even intermediate competencies in a CBE computer science degree, thereby having more time to spend on advanced topics or reducing their overall time in the program. Finally, students in CBE programs tend to be more engaged throughout the program because their learning experience is personalized and self-paced, and CBE programs can lead to better student outcomes.

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