10 things you need to know about Competency Based Assessments
The need for assessment is gearing up in today’s dynamic world, where the stress is on sharpening current capabilities and developing new ones to stay ahead.
Competency-based assessment is commonly used in educational and professional settings to evaluate an individual's readiness for a particular job or to assess their progress toward specific learning objectives. It is often used in conjunction with competency-based education or training programs, which focus on developing and improving specific competencies required for a particular role or profession.
What is a Competency Based Assessment?
Competency-based assessment is an approach to evaluating an individual's knowledge, skills, and abilities based on specific competencies or job requirements. It focuses on measuring an individual's ability to perform a task or function and their potential for success in a particular role.
Competency-based assessment typically involves identifying the key competencies required for a particular job or role and designing assessments or evaluations that measure an individual's proficiency in these areas. This can involve a variety of methods, such as performance-based assessments, simulations, and observations of job-related tasks.
The benefits of using competency-based assessments include increased objectivity, reliability, and validity in evaluating an individual's potential for success in a particular role. Competency-based assessments can also help individuals identify areas for development and improvement, which can be used to guide training and professional development plans.
The approaches to competency assessment may differ. There might still be some colleges and universities that might ask how to do a competency assessment.
The blog aims to brief out 10 important things you need to know about competency-based assessment.
Competency-Based Assessment in Higher Education
Competency-based assessment has become increasingly popular in higher education as a way to measure student learning outcomes and ensure that graduates have the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in the workforce. In higher education, competency-based assessment typically involves the following steps:
Identify the competencies: The first step in competency-based assessment is to identify the specific competencies that students are expected to master as part of their program of study. This may involve analyzing the curriculum and identifying the knowledge, skills, and abilities that are needed for success in a particular field or profession.
Develop assessment criteria: Once the competencies have been identified, the next step is to develop assessment criteria that will be used to measure students' performance against those competencies. This may involve creating rubrics, checklists, or other scoring tools that clearly define what is expected of students.
Gather evidence: The next step is to gather evidence that demonstrates students' performance against the identified competencies. This may involve using various assessment methods such as tests, projects, presentations, or portfolios.
Evaluate performance: Once the evidence has been gathered, students' performance is evaluated against the assessment criteria. This may involve assigning scores, grades, or other ratings that reflect students' level of competency.
Provide feedback: Finally, students are provided with feedback on their performance, including areas where they demonstrated competency and areas where they need further development. This feedback is used to guide future learning and development and to help students improve their performance over time.
Competency-based assessment in higher education is designed to provide a clear and objective measure of students' performance against specific competencies and to help ensure that graduates have the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in their chosen profession. By focusing on mastery of specific competencies, rather than simply completing a certain number of courses or credits, competency-based assessment can help ensure that students are truly prepared for the workforce.
How does competency-based assessment work?
In most cases, the competency-based assessment starts with a self-assessment, followed by an assessor review. It is from here the learner's development needs are identified, with which a development plan is created.
The next step is on and off-the-job training with a proven demonstration of skills attained. In many cases, there is room for re-assessment to better the learning.
Competency-based learning stresses EPA regulation in its assessment. If you may ask what is an EPA, EPA's are Entrustable Professional Activities that stress the integration of competencies needed to deliver care.
EPA brings the entrustment factor into the workplace-based assessment where the learners are supervised directly, proactively, and reactively, ultimately aiming to see the work readiness of the learner to safely perform his skill-based activity without supervision.
Though initially, the competency-based assessment was used to assess only managerial and supervisory competencies, it gradually went on to assess non-managerial roles and activities of potential workers from both governmental and industry institutions.
Thus, competency-based assessment is a method that is completely correlated with behaviors. The benefits of competency-based assessment could be many.
Here is a direct see-through of the competency-based assessment in higher education in detail.
1. Diagnostic activity - pre-assessment
The competency level assessment is incomplete without the pre-assessment.
This helps to assess the prior learning of any learner. The learner gets assessed in terms of competencies, which allows for personalizing the teaching approach for individual profile learners. While pre-assessing, any trainer applying for training should have his potential competency profile created. This is a very important step and cannot be avoided.
The pre-assessment diagnostic activities according to Stiggins (2002) connect to the 3 main questions:
Source: Richard J. Stiggins, 2002 - Assessment Crisis: The Absence of Assessment for Learning
2. Instructional Design
The competency-based assessment in education is completely different from the traditional models. Making it unique is its instructional design.
An effective CBE program should have an Instructional design. It starts with identifying the learning outcomes for a given course even before commencing. The next stage is to develop assessment activities for those outcomes.
3. Assessment activities
Most competency-based assessment methods are effective. With them comes an end to the question of how to assess skills and competencies.
While automated grading of quizzes best suits low-level cognitive domain concepts (Bloom’s Taxonomy levels to remember and understand), for a higher-level cognitive skill, direct assessment types (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) could be more appropriate. This could include descriptive written essays, observational grading, and case study analyses. These assessments are faculty-evaluated.
Before the assessment happens, the students should be made to feel confident that they will succeed with the preparation given to them.
4. Outcomes, a mandate in CBE’s Assessment Learning Cycle
Defining the outcomes tops the learning cycle.
Learning gets purposeful when the learners understand what their goals are. Hence the first step in designing the assessment learning cycle is defining the outcomes.
Outcomes are similar to the foundation one lays down to erect his building. It means the knowledge, skills, abilities, the level of learning required. A well-defined learning outcome should be,
- clearly defined with a clear action verb
- discreetly measurable
5. Competency-based assessment tools
Source: DataNow Snapshot: 2017 Competency Planning and Management
The competency-based assessment tools are becoming the high-performing choice to manage performance development.
The competency tools can extract the successful performance of the learner through proper demonstration, and clear and tangible actions.
Some of the competency-based assessment tools could be interviews, case studies, assessment centers, questionnaires, tests, questionnaires, etc.
Projects and assignments are the two well-known competency-based assessments that well suit engineering education’s practical scenario. It goes on to test the ability of a professional’s output. Fastré et al in one of their professional articles state that the competence-based assessment reflects all the industry-standard criteria related to work, and gives information about the learner’s strengths, and weaknesses. In short, it is used to measure the competency level of all industry experts.
Some of the other essential competency-based tools are,
6. Choosing the kind of assessment - Authentic assessment or evidence-based assessment?
“Authentic assessment” also means evidence-based assessment.
The very idea that CBE prepares its students for the workforce, stresses the fact that the assessments planned should be in line with real-life experiences. Choosing the type of assessment is a very crucial element in achieving the learning outcome.
7. Building student-friendly rubrics
The rubric is almost similar to a working guide both for teachers and students, which is usually handed out before the commencement of assessments to let the students know the criteria on what their work will be judged.
In competency-based learning, the rubric helps to evaluate students' performance based on the total range of criteria rather than a numerical score.
The essentials of competency-based learning rubrics
- Rubrics should have clearly articulated competencies and learning outcomes as their base
- They are intended to give clarity to students about what and why they’re learning
- A well-written rubric should essentially be a tool for teachers to understand the quality performance of the student work collaboratively
- Rubrics should ultimately measure performance, reflect on learning, and plan the next steps
Since competency-based learning is not time-bound, it lets learners revisit the learning activities and get reassessed, and be supported by a routine metacognitive reflection of learning and formative feedback.
The best-fitting rubric for CBE could be a single-point rubric, which encourages an ongoing conversation between the student and the faculty about learning rather than merely delivering points. Some of its strong points are it is streamlined, focused, and student-centered.
The single-point rubric can have concerns, criteria, and the exceeding standards of the students within. Under the criteria (middle column), are the shortlisted learning targets or outcomes.
CBE assessments = Assured success
CBE’s pathway leads to success.
The first way is using the formative assessment with lots of activities that help students to demonstrate their mastery level, irrespective of the time/place/pace of learning. On achieving this with confidence, they then continue by the summative assessment.
By taking up both the formative and summative assessments, the student becomes a master. Committing mistakes is accepted here as students are given pertinent feedback, continuously.
8. Role of the feedback
Feedback is a pivotal component of the assessment strategy. It helps faculty to guide their students in the learning path. Competency-based training and assessment are two essential criteria the faculty are trained at.
By giving instant feedback on time, there are chances for reduced risks of inequalities. In addition, students get to plan the next step of their learning path.
9. Measuring success
The competency-based approach in education is highlighted by its success criteria, which is the best practice of any form of education.
It is even more crucial concerning a CBE model of instruction. Students are informed that they succeed only upon the demonstration of mastery, thus making learning explicit.
10. Results and further analysis
This step is where the faculty’s professional judgment comes into focus. With technology, this happens in the form of learning analytics. The competency-based approach in education is the culmination of quantitative and qualitative student assessment. Results obtained should help to arrive at the areas for student improvement and encouragement.
Note:- It is the learning analytics along with the outcome achievement data (acculturated from the course) that leads to the improvement and optimization decision.
Redesigning the assessment learning cycle
The assessment learning cycle should be flexible and dynamic, which can take adjustments along the way. The performance data procured during the results analysis phase can help identify opportunities for redesigning or improvement for a given course.
Regularly, any course with low performance on learning outcomes should be reviewed. In addition, this review should consider the results of multiple academic terms for an effective redesign to happen.
An effective assessment learning cycle is a result of well-spent time, which is beneficial in producing successful students, successful faculty, and overall achieved learning outcomes. When in unison, all these achieve success together. When implemented well, a CBE course will have a well-built assessment framework.
Conclusion - Putting the assessment together
Competency assessment is a continuous process, by which students’ knowledge and skills are constantly developed. It progresses an individual from being a novice to an expert, well enough to stay ahead of the curve in today’s competitive world. Conducting CBE assessments with software can make the process more efficient and productive. Creatrix CBE software works through every step of your strategic mission, starting from the planning stage until you share the success. It lets you effectively plan and execute your learner’s competencies.
We help in,
- Program Planning
- Recruit and Enroll
- Competency and LO Mapping
- Self-Paced Learning (LMS)
- Assessments
- Student Progress
- Student Portfolio
- Course and Faculty Evaluation
- Reports and Accreditation
Contact our team for more information.
