About Competency Based Education at CPCS

The CPCS educational program is organized around a competency-based, outcome oriented curriculum. In a competency-based system, desired learning outcomes are clearly defined and stated up front. Students are assessed by whether they can demonstrate those outcomes. In the CPCS curriculum, the different learning outcomes are called "competencies." Students progress through the CPCS curriculum by demonstrating that they have met the learning outcomes in a variety of skill and knowledge areas. We call this demonstrating a competency.

 

What is a competency?

A competency is simply a statement of learning outcomes for a skill or a body of knowledge. When students demonstrate a "competency," they are demonstrating their ability to do something. They are showing the outcome of the learning process. Lots of the things that people do in their lives can be defined as different competencies - job skills, living skills, etc. In the CPCS curriculum we've taken the different kinds of skills and knowledge that are important for college graduates in public and community service to have and we have defined them as different Competencies. For example: the ability to interpret data from the census is a competency; so is the ability to analyze a political argument or explain historical developments - three examples of competencies that are part of our curriculum.

 

In most educational programs, a student moves through the requirements of the curriculum by taking a course and being assessed at the end of a semester on how well she has done meeting the requirements of the course. The assessment says how well a student has done in a class, but it doesn't necessarily assess what a student has learned. Wherever the student is at the end of the course - that's what the assessment shows. When the term ends, the student is done with that learning and moves on to the next class.

 

The CPCS system is different (and we think more like the real world). Students at CPCS know up front what the expected learning outcomes are and each student is expected to fully demonstrate them all. It's not enough to be part way competent in something, our goal is to help every student reach the level of demonstrating their competence. If it takes less than a semester to acquire a particular competency, the student can demonstrate the competency and move on. If it takes more than a semester, that's okay, too. All students are expected to demonstrate the required outcomes, but different students will do it in different ways and at different paces.