Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
Southern New Hampshire University’s College for America has no courses, credits or teachers. Helped by an online academic coach, students complete assignments that show their mastery of 120 “competencies,” such as distinguishing fact from opinion or conveying information through charts and graphs. Students can move at their own pace to earn an accredited associate degree, paying $1,250 every six months.
Does college pay? A new web site called College Risk Report asks the collegebound to enter their prospective college or university and their major, then estimates how long it would take a graduate to pay for a bachelor’s degree and graphs lifetime earnings for a bachelor’s, associate degree and a high school diploma.
A proposed New University of California would award credits and degrees to people who prove their mastery of subject matter by passing exams, regardless of whether they attended a class, studied online, learned on the job or read a bunch of books.
Federal college aid overwhelmingly goes to students pursuing degrees, while many seeking vocational certificates don’t qualify for aid. Taxpayers should support people who want to learn high-demand job skills — computer techs and nurse’s aides — not people who want to spend four years studying Shakespeare, argues a workforce researcher.
Students who earn credits for competency, not just “seat time,” will be eligible for federal student aid, if their college’s competency-based program is approved by accreditors.
Higher education is critical for workforce success — and too expensive, according to respondents to a Gallup/Lumina Foundation poll. Seventy percent of those surveyed favored awarding credit based on mastery of content rather than time in class and 87 percent said students should receive college credit for knowledge and skills acquired outside of the classroom.
Technology makes it much easier to personalize education through show what you know” promotion, concludes The Shift From Cohorts to Competency, a Digital Learning Network Smart Series paper.
The cohort model — children are grouped by age — moves on students who aren’t ready and holds back students who could excel, the authors write. ”A competency-based system frees up students to learn at their own pace and according to their own needs,” said Carri Schneider, one of the authors. “Competency education is the ultimate path to personalization.”
The Carnegie Unit, which measures learning based on time in class rather than actual learning, may be on the way out. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which developed the measure in 1906, will study ways to measure competency.
Soon, more college students will be able to earn credits for competency, whether they learned through a free online course, on-the-job training, military experience or independent study.
More than 2 million K-12 students are enrolled in online courses and that’s projected to hit 10 million by 2014. Can Digital Learning Transform Education? asks Education Next.
First, We Need a Brand New K-12 System, writes Chester Finn, Jr., president of the Fordham Institute and editor of Education Reform for the Digital Era.
“Local districts and their school boards want to control online learning, Finn writes.
Yet leaving districts and their boards in charge of digital instruction will retard innovation, entrepreneurship, collaboration, and smart competition. It will raise costs; undermine efficiency; block rich instructional options; restrict school choice and parental influence; and strengthen the hand of other interest groups, including but not limited to already too-powerful teachers unions.
Unions are “determined to prevent digital learning from shrinking their ranks or weakening their power bases.”
In California, for example, the state teachers union’s model contract requires that: ”No employee shall be displaced because of distance learning or other educational technology.”
. . . Elsewhere, unions have ensured that class-size limits nonsensically apply to online schools.
As Digital Learning Draws New Users, Transformation Will Occur, counters Michael Horn, executive director of education at the Innosight Institute.
. . . moving away from seat-time requirements toward a competency-based system, in which students advance upon mastery of a concept or skill, is critical to unleashing the full power of digital learning. But because today’s education system was modeled after a factory, time rather than learning is the primary unit of measure.
“Education regulations for the digital-learning world of tomorrow will almost certainly be implemented piecemeal,” Horn concludes. Online learning will be held to a higher standard at first.
Instead of earning credits for “seat time,” colleges are offering degrees based on showing competency – usually by doing well on a test. Southern New Hampshire University is partnering with employers on a $5,000 online, competency-based associate degree.
Connecticut’s community college presidents are worried about a new state law that lets unprepared students skip remediation and take college-level classes. Those who resist — or all 12 presidents, depending on who you believe — have been told to apply for “expedited termination” by the end of the month.
Community colleges are designing self-paced courses that will give credits for demonstrated competence — not “seat time.”
Also on Community College Spotlight: A bridge to trade skills.
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