Jaqueline Yalda, who has been a campus police officer at El Paso Community College in Texas for a decade, sought a promotion earlier this year. But first, the department required her to complete a college-level course in criminal justice.
“This was my first time taking a CBE course,” Yalda said in a phone interview from the police headquarters on the Valle Verde campus. “After taking it, I’m definitely going to consider taking the other courses I need. At first, I was scared because I never worked on the before. Once I took the orientation … I thought, ‘Wow, this is really easy and convenient.’”
Grades are based on projects, papers or exams that students complete when they feel ready to prove they have mastered the material. Many instructors “do see the value of offering that kind of flexibility for our students. We appreciate that flexibility in our personal and professional lives, too,” said Flower Darby, associate director of the University of Missouri’s Teaching for Learning Center, a professional development organization, during an online conference sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education in September.
“You are seeing states step up and start to support more of this activity than they have in the past,” she said in a phone interview. “I think there’s a lot of pressure to increase access. Programs based on time are still difficult for students who are juggling families and work.” Faculty who completed the survey praised the training they got for conducting the competency-based courses, but they recommended more training and technical resources to create materials and record lectures.
At the Senate meeting Aug. 25, English professor Jeffrey Ragan said the competency model could lead to lower pay for faculty, despite the experience at colleges such as El Paso Community, where faculty pay was unchanged by the new model. According to minutes from the meeting, Ragan noted that faculty are currently paid by the number of lecture-hours worked and said the competency model would upend that.
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