Dive Brief:
- Educational technology has not quite caught up to the explosion of interest in competency-based programs, leaving institutions to cobble together solutions that fit their needs.
- According to eCampus News, there are vendors trying to offer complete solutions to colleges and universities, but little consensus within the education community over what CBE actually includes makes single solutions hard to design and market to different institutions.
- Cobbling together various solutions seems like a start, but colleges and universities have had trouble with compatibility — the data from a learning management system, for example, needs to work with data from the student information system, and that compatibility may be the hardest part.
Dive Insight:
Competency-based education is perhaps one of the most troublesome innovations in higher education, when it comes to designing systems around it. Higher education institutions are becoming more adept at tracking and analyzing data to improve student outcomes, but with CBE, if the technology that powers the program removes access to unified data, much is lost. The Caliper Analytics Standard aims to create a foundation for data formatting, much like the standard for learning tools interoperability created a foundation for integrating learning tools into a single LMS. As more vendors earn certification, the standards are expected to give colleges and universities more power over their own data.
Beyond this, however, is the fact that legacy systems for transcripts and financial aid don’t even work for the unique world of CBE, leaving even more for colleges and universities to do before launching their own programs.