Dive Brief:
- The University of Texas’s Institute for Transformational Learning has created an all-digital, biomedical sciences competency-based degree program, designed for iPad through the Total Educational Experience, or TEx, program.
- Campus Technology reports that the decision to use iPads came from timing — it started developing the program, which launched at its Rio Grande Valley campus, in November of 2014 — and connectivity, as some students in the target population did not have reliable cell service.
- The CBE program pulled technology support from multiple vendors, including Salesforce and Canvas, and developers have focused on constant improvement, with plans to release a version for all mobile devices through a Web app next year.
Dive Insight:
The Institute for Transformational Learning got its start in 2012, searching for alternatives to the exploding number of massive open online courses. The institute plans to expand its mobile-first competency-based degree programs to other disciplines and increase scale in the coming years, recognizing the desire for flexibility among an increasingly nontraditional student population.
The University of Texas is not alone in this plan. The number of institutions developing or offering competency-based programs has grown from some three or four dozen one year ago to more than 600 now. One complication, of course, is accreditation and the hot-and-cold response from the U.S. Department of Education to such degree programs.