No more attending classes: These community colleges let students learn at their own pace

Jaqueline Yalda, a campus police officer at El Paso Community College in Texas for the past decade, applied for a promotion earlier this year. But first, the department required her to take a college-level criminal justice course.

Yalda hadn’t taken any college classes in many years. And, at the age of 38, she was a little intimidated.

However, Yalda received a ‘A’ in Introduction to Criminal Justice and was promoted to sergeant a few weeks later. She is now considering advancing to lieutenant, which will necessitate completing her full associate degree.

Her mystery? She was taking the course at El Paso Community College through a “competency-based education” program, which allowed her to work at her own pace through an online course. She completed the course in four weeks, rather than the allotted eight, and said professors responded quickly online when she had questions.

“This was my first time taking a CBE course,” Yalda explained over the phone from the police station on the Valle Verde campus. “After I finish it, I’ll definitely think about taking the other courses I need.” I was nervous at first because I had never worked on the [remote teaching platform] before. When I finished the orientation, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is really easy and convenient.'”

Supporters see the proliferation of competency-based education as a boon for working adults and other nontraditional students seeking additional training and credentials to advance their careers. However, some critics, including some professors, believe it is a poor substitute for traditional learning.

While a few colleges across the country have used competency-based education for some courses, California will be the first state to coordinate competency-based programs across eight community college campuses using state-backed curricula. According to Amber Garrison Duncan, executive vice president of the Competency-Based Education Network, a nonprofit organization formed to evaluate and promote such programs, more states may follow suit.

Competency-based education, unlike traditional college classes, does not require students to attend classroom lectures. Students in competency-based courses complete coursework at their own pace, as opposed to asynchronous online courses, in which students log in and watch recorded online lectures over the course of a semester.

Grades are based on projects, papers, or exams that students complete when they believe they are ready to demonstrate mastery of the material.

The courses differ from those offered by private, for-profit online universities in that they are roughly the same price as a regular public community college course and frequently require life learning or a specific skill set as a prerequisite rather than class standing as, say, a sophomore. Students who have already mastered the information in a class can simply skip the hours of instruction and complete the class assessment.

In an interview, Garrison Duncan stated that there was interest from “every flavor of institution, from community colleges to four-year institutions, and from theology to welding” at the group’s conference this month. It’s a movement that we’re seeing gain traction in a variety of fields and disciplines.”

Nonetheless, some instructors who thrive on personal relationships with their students are skeptical, according to experts.

Many instructors “understand the importance of providing that level of flexibility to our students.” “We value flexibility in our personal and professional lives as well,” said Flower Darby, associate director of the University of Missouri’s Teaching for Learning Center, a professional development organization, at a Chronicle of Higher Education-sponsored online conference in September.

However, she added, many professors are experiencing a “loss of connection” with their students. “And, quite frankly, I think that’s what brings a lot of us our joy in our teaching … that fizz, that buzz, that connection with our students,” Darby went on to say. “So, the real question is … how can we cultivate those connections?”

State diagrams

According to Melissa Vallarin, spokesperson for California community college system chancellor Sonya Christian, seven of the eight California colleges participating in the pilot program have received accreditation from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. In the spring, at least one competency-based program will begin.

Early childhood education, business administration, kinesiology and wellness, technology, automotive technology, and culinary arts will be among the courses offered across the group of campuses, according to Vallarin in an email.

The programs are aimed at “working adults, older students, and underserved students,” she wrote.

The most difficult challenge, she said, was obtaining accreditation for the courses, which sometimes rely on knowledge gained outside of traditional learning settings, such as through job experience, rather than traditional evaluation methods such as class hours, student achievement, or evaluation of in-person teacher skills.

States have embraced the programs, according to Duncan of the Competency-Based Education Network, in part to address worker shortages in fields such as health care, education, and certain trades requiring specialized skills.

“You are seeing states step up and start to support more of this activity than they have in the past,” she said over the phone. “I believe there is a lot of pressure to expand access. Time-based programs [in class] continue to be difficult for students who are juggling families and work.”

Some states have taken the first steps toward implementing competency-based education in community colleges. California and Texas have provided grant funding and seed money for the courses as the colleges prepare materials and seek accreditation. According to Myshie Pagel, dean of education and career and technical education at El Paso Community College, at least six Texas community colleges offer CBE courses.

Kentucky published a planning guide for community and technical colleges interested in implementing competency-based courses last year.Salt Lake Community College in Utah has 19 competency-based courses, and at least one community college in Massachusetts has competency-based courses in early childhood education.

Students at some four-year state universities can also earn degrees through competency-based courses. For example, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee offers an associate of arts and sciences degree as well as bachelor’s degrees in information science and technology, diagnostic imaging, nursing, and health sciences.

Concerns for faculty

A July survey of El Paso Community College students enrolled in competency-based education found that the majority completed a course in three to four weeks. According to the survey, nearly 60% of students intend to take more CBE courses, while slightly less than a quarter believe the format is not a good fit for them.

Faculty who responded to the survey praised the training they received for teaching competency-based courses, but they suggested more training and technical resources for creating materials and recording lectures.

El Paso Community College’s Pagel said that keeping faculty in the loop about course design was critical to getting their buy-in, as was compensating them the same as they would for teaching a three-credit-hour in-person class.

“It’s the students who save their time, not the faculty,” she says, explaining that teachers, like any other faculty, must be available to answer questions, meet virtually with students, and hold regular office hours. They also helped design the courses, according to Pagel.

“On the faculty side, what you are really able to do is, for those students who just get it, you can move them through,” she told me. “For those students who are struggling, it gives the faculty member more time to spend more time with those students.”

However, faculty at one of the California colleges selected for the pilot program expressed reservations about the change. The Madera Community College faculty senate raised concerns in an August resolution that CBE courses could exacerbate rather than alleviate inequities among students by relegating poorer students to CBE programs. The resolution claimed that professors were not kept informed of the college’s plans.

During the Senate meeting on August 25, English professor Jeffrey Ragan stated that the competency model could result in lower faculty pay, despite the experience at colleges such as El Paso Community College, where faculty pay remained unchanged by the new model. According to meeting minutes, Ragan stated that faculty are currently paid based on the number of lecture hours worked and that the competency model would change that.

“We’d have to log our work, and it’d be subject to low caps….” In other words, according to the minutes, “we would be selling ourselves cheaply.” He also questioned how the new model would evaluate professors. Ragan was unable to be reached for comment on this article.

According to Kelle Parsons, senior researcher for the American Institute for Research, a nonprofit research and consulting group that has developed modeling tools for institutions interested in competency-based education, measuring the programs’ success is difficult because “CBE turns so many of the things we take for granted into a variable.”

Colleges, for example, count “on-time” completion of a degree as four years for associate degrees and six years for bachelor’s degrees, according to Parsons.

“However, in CBE, it could take shorter or longer,” Parsons explained in an interview. “In our first earliest attempts to measure enrollment and retention, students were doing about as well as, and sometimes a little bit better than, students in traditional programs.”

She expects more schools to launch similar courses because her organization, which specializes in competency programs, has been receiving more inquiries recently. “Based on the number of new institutions reaching out to us, we see interest from a new batch.”