Kelly Brooks and Kelly Simon, both of Capella University, shared their experience with designing and implementing a full competency-based program – with no credits or grades to speak of.
Capella is among the most fitting institutions for such the program, called FlexPath. The University has been using competency-based education for 10 years and is fully online. Additionally, the university has devoted significant time and resources into direct assessment of students. But despite the solid platform, the FlexPath program still had significant hurdles as it was built. According to the two Kelly’s, registration and implementation into the SIS was tricky, and they needed to develop an accompanying transcript that would be transitive. That is, if credit was transferred from a traditional course into the FlexPath program, or vice versa, the transcript and the program itself needed to facilitate that transfer without complication to the student and with minimal formatting from support staff.
FlexPath is so named, in part, because it is self-paced. While the student cannot enroll in more than two courses at a time, they can complete a basic course and then move into the next level course so long as they can demonstrate competencies of a sufficient level to pass. And each competency requires numerous assessments. To help with this process, student coaches and a self-completed timeline were created to helps students move through at a reasonable pace, with the goal of not overloading either the student or the faculty with those assessments.
Naturally, a broad range of departments had to be looped in order for the project to take off. In addition, student engagement tracking, while always important, is extremely important as FlexPath students progress (or don’t progress). In the worst case scenario, students struggling with this format can move to more traditional programs. The most important thing, according to Kelly Brooks, was that the program had to be willing, as they were in development, to be wrong, and to make rapid and sometimes drastic changes.
But so far, the University and program participants seem to enjoying the new model. Students cite the convenience of progressing through the program at a pace and level appropriate to their experience, knowledge, and time availability.