CBE … Competency Based Education in Collegiate Mathematics

Recently, I wrote about “Benny” in a post related to Individual Personalized Instruction (IPI).  We don’t hear about IPI like we once did, though we do hear about the online homework systems that implement an individual study plan or ‘pie’.  Instead of IPI, we are hearing about “CBE” — Competency Based Education (or Learning); take a look at this note on the US Department of Education site http://www.ed.gov/oii-news/competency-based-learning-or-personalized-learning

That particular piece is directed towards a K-12 audience; we are hearing very similar things for the college situations.  The Department (Education) sent accreditors a Dear Colleague Letter (GEN-14-23) this past December, as academia responds to the call to move away from “seat time” as the standard for documenting progress towards degrees and certification.  A former Provost at my college predicted that colleges will no longer issue grades by 2016, because we would be using CBE and portfolios (said this about 10 years ago); clearly, that has not happened … but we should not assume that the status quo is ‘safe’.

In my experience, most faculty have a strong opinion on the use of CBE … some favoring it, probably more opposing it.  As implemented at most institutions in mathematics, I think CBE is a disservice to faculty and students.  However, this is more about the learning objectives and assessments used, rather than CBE itself.

We need to understand that the world outside academia has real suspicions about the learning in our classes.  The doubts are based on the sometimes vague outcomes declared for our courses, and the perceptions are especially skewed about mathematics.  We tend to base grades on a combination of effort (attendance, completing homework, etc) along with tests written by classroom teachers (often perceived to be picky or focused on one type of problem).

One of the projects I did this past year was a study of pre-calculus courses at different institutions in my state, which lacks a controlling or governing body for colleges.  To understand the variation in courses, I wanted to look at the learning outcomes.  This effort did not last long … because most of the institutions treated learning outcomes as corporate ‘secret recipes’.  Other states do have transparency on learning outcomes — when all institutions are required to use the same ones.

This relates to the political and policy interest in CBE:

CBE will improve education by making outcomes explicit, and ensuring that assessment is aligned with those outcomes.

Sometimes, I think those outside of academia believe that we (inside) prefer to have ill-defined outcomes so that we can hide what we are doing.  We are facing pressure to change this, from a variety of sources.  Mathematics in the first two years can improve our reputation … while helping our students … if we respond in a positive manner to these pressures.

So, here is the basic problem:

Most mathematics courses are defined by the topics included, and learning outcomes focus on manipulating the objects within those topics.  The use of CBE tends to result in finely-grained assessments of those procedures.
Understanding, reasoning, and application of ideas are usually not included in the CBE implementation.

Compare these two learning outcomes (whether used in CBE or not):

• Given an appropriate function with polynomial terms, the student will derive a formula for the inverse function.
• Given an appropriate function with polynomial terms,  the student will explain how to find the inverse function, will find the inverse function, and will then verify that the inverse function meets the definition.

Showing competence on the first outcome deals with a low level learning process; the second rises to higher levels … and reflects the type of emphasis I am hearing from faculty across the country.

I do not see “CBE” as a problem.  The problem is our learning outcomes for mathematics courses, which are focused on behaviors of limited value in mathematics.  A related problem is that mathematics faculty need more professional development on assessment ideas, so that we can improve the quality of our assessments.  Without changing our learning outcomes, the use of a methodology like CBE will wrap a system around some bad stuff — which can make the result look better, without improving the value to students.

We need to answer the question “What does learning mathematics mean in THIS course?”  for every course we teach.  Assessments (whether CBE or not) follow from the learning outcomes we write as an answer to that question.

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1 Comment

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  By schremmer, June 21, 2015 @ 12:46 pm

  Re: We need to understand that the world outside academia has real suspicions about the learning in our classes.

  Well, so do some of us inside academia.

  But I have a question about CBE: How does it really differ from the usual stuff.

  Disclosure: I was “educated” in France where an exam consisted of two parts: (1) What you might call a “content part” and (2) What you might call a “problem” in which one was given some data followed by a number of questions: a. Prove that … b. Assuming in addition that … what is the set of … c. Show that it follows from c. that if …. then …

  If anyone is interested I can actually give references and/or (translated) examples.

  Three things should also be noted:
  A. This kind of exam would start being given around age 12.
  B. The content part was a “late” addition to mitigate objections about the problem part involving a bit of chance.
  C. The use of the past tense throughout this disclosure: it seems that, later, things have been “americanized”.

  In any case, my answer to “What does learning mathematics mean in THIS course?”, the question Rotman asks lastly, a most central one in my opinion, would be: something in the spirit of the French exams. Here again, should anyone be interested in specifics, just let me know.

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