Transform Your Teaching: What is Competency-Based Education?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

In this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles kick off a new series on Competency-Based Education. Check out the episode to hear the characteristics of CBE and how it compares with traditional educational practice.

Podcast links

Show notes

In traditional educational models, time is the constant and education is the variable. With Competency-Based Education (CBE) models, time is the variable and education is the constant. In the current educational landscape, CBE is commonly seen in apprenticeships and in trades. Typically, it involves an instructor coming alongside a student to help them achieve mastery of content.

Jared is currently apprehensive about CBE because it turns time into a variable. He still is concerned about the level of understanding that a student can reach in certain academic areas that require higher-level thinking if the primary variable is time. For example, since he comes from a language arts background, he is concerned about the level of synthesis and critical reading that may not be reached using competency-based education.

Competency-based education can already seen in more traditional education settings through some modalities (such as flipped classroom). In this series, Rob and Jared will learn from the experiences of others who have used CBE to shed more light on where it is being used and how faculty can use it to design some or all of their instruction the experiences of others who have used it.