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 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) 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-traditional-teaching-versus-progressive
What is Competency-Based Learning? (n.d.).
Obtenido de eLearners.Com:
http://www.elearners.com/online-education-resources/online-learning/what-is-competency-based-learning/
Saturday, October 24, 2015
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