Dr. J's Blog of ELT Praxis

There's been a noticeable move here in Iowa towards Competency Based Education .  It's slowly gaining traction in the PK-12 system, and it may eventually affect the way we learn and teach in higher education.  What I like most about it is that it rewards competency more than seat time, the passive version of attendance.  I have sat through many classes in which I learned very little because I knew most of the content already.  As a teacher, I've had students that I recognized passed my course way before the class was complete, so I had to find ways to make the class more engaging without "over-preparing" them for the next course. For a class to effectively embrace competency based education, I believe the whole program, in which it is a part of, needs to adopt the approach, otherwise other teachers and students may find that the competency based approach may be unfair.  I'd be happy to expand on this later, but I'd like to present an interim solution...

Lately in my career, I have been paying more attention to assessing students in terms of academic discipline or the ability to utilize certain study strategies on their own. This has been most important in two of my positions, one as teacher trainer at Sookmyung Women's University-TESOL in Korea and one as an instructor of English for Academic Purposes at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse . Personal Background In Korea, the TESOL program was developed so that students were assessed in generally the same way in all classes. All instructors had to follow the same guidelines for implementing and carrying out the terms and conditions for absences, tardiness, late and missing assignments, missing tests, and classroom participation. One reason for the success of this program is that these guidelines were followed very strictly by all the teacher trainers. A misbehaving or cheating student was detected quickly and usually was not awarded the TESOL certificate. In La Crosse , I...