Experiences in Learning and Assessment

COMPETENCY-BASED LEARNING

1

Experiences in Learning and Assessment When competency-based learning was not used

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano Saturday, October 24, 2015 Twitter: @jonacuso Post 199

“Schools need to put more effort into evaluating what makes effective teaching, and ensure that discredited practices are rooted out form classrooms” (Adams, 2014).

And the panorama does not seem to change much when one gets to higher education institutions. From my personal experience, as a learner who had to survive 11 years of schooling and some five more years of college studies to get a BA, educational experiences in my learning and assessment were not exactly like the dual education model used in Germany. If sarcasm was read correctly by my reader, life would have been much easier for people in my generation if one had been trained to function in the real world when being taught with competencies.

Based on Adams (2014), “some schools and teachers continue using methods that cause little or no improvement in student progress, and instead rely on anecdotal

COMPETENCY-BASED LEARNING

2

evidence.” Adams’s account is quite similar to my experiences back in my school and college days. Though at the university I had several types of professors, many of them were just interested in this “anecdotal evidence” rather than having us develop any competence related to what was being studied in class. Deep learning was something that was not exactly encouraged in many of the courses I took being a student, and we learners had to rely a lot on our memory to survive testing weeks. In terms of assessment, most of us were just happy with a grade rather than being able to do something competently with what we had learned in class or by the time a course was over. For instance, at some point of our essay writing training, we were more content with getting a good grade that really understanding how important was to write academically for the sake of our future lives as faculty members or schooling workers.

How might our experiences have differed if we had been taught through competency-based learning and assessment? As far as I remember my years back in the university, I cannot say that several of our professors somehow toyed with the idea of competencies to teach. What needs to be understood here is that I cannot assure that they were aware of what competences were and how these academic constructs could have permeated the course program they had to follow; perhaps, the process they followed was somehow connected with the development of a competency. But in those times, at least at the university I studied at, the end product was what really counted for some of the courses I have in my mind now. If we had been taught to function in the real academic world, like in my very personal case –especially now that I am a university professor-, life –at the beginning- could have been much easier in the workplace. If projects for courses had been carefully planned bearing in mind what was expected from us in academic working settings, professors (and even high school teaching professionals)

COMPETENCY-BASED LEARNING

3

could have taught us to be functional in that working ambience. Education at the time I was a college students could have been customized in pace; that is one may have worked “as quickly or as slowly as [one] like[s] within the time constraints of the program� (What is Competency-Based Learning?, n.d.). But that did not happen. And most importantly, one would have learned workplace skills, and not wait to start work to develop those needed competencies that we continue to polish at this point of our careers.

At this point of my teaching career at the university level, my experiences, though they were not what I wish I had had, pay off today in my teaching. One of the very first things I said to myself when I was to become a teacher was that I did not want to be like the educators I had faced along my many years of schooling and university studies. Just a few of them left an imprint in my actual teaching that I do not want to overlook because they gave me a solid ground to grow professionally. That is the reason why I have tried and continue to try several different methodologies and teaching/learning approaches to improve student learning and competency development. As an educator I want to facilitate learning and knowledge to be used in course tasks that can produce some good competency development that can be fully functional in the real working world.

References Adams, R. (2014, October 31). Education study finds in favour of traditional teaching styles. Retrieved from The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/oct/31/education-traditionalteaching-versus-progressive

What is Competency-Based Learning? (n.d.). Obtenido de eLearners.Com: http://www.elearners.com/online-education-resources/online-learning/what-iscompetency-based-learning/