The learning experience in the University of the World will, very likely, require students to make a significant mental adjustment: Students are in control of your learning. Students are not taking in concepts that others have decided they must learn, and they are not now supposed to absorb or memorize lessons given by a professor. Students are expected to identify what is important for them, specifically to improve their employment and quality of life, and then they are expected to go and find the learning needed. The result is that you end up with strengthened life competencies.
Life competencies are defined as “abilities to perform in life.” They are aspects of knowledge that a student must learn and also skills that a student must be able to perform. Knowledge is comprised of much of the conventional education, such as a topic’s theory, history, and operating rules. Skills are partially filled by conventional education, especially regarding academic skills. In addition, skills are defined as performance, such as is mandated by a Thesis where a student shows the growth of a seed of an idea or practice to a larger scale. Therefore, competency-based education includes a number of proofs of learning that must be acquired by the student and then demonstrated.
Competency-based education provides a way for students to structure otherwise random live work into a focused learning that has a direct application to their work. There are a number of advantages to this learning framework. If the learning objective is related to agriculture, business, education, health, or connection to the world, students will find the most dynamic classroom is where these activities are taking place. What is typically an isolated discipline in a classroom is instead connected to the real world. When students learn how to learn in this environment, school becomes life-long.
Core Competency Areas
Competencies are not mere wish-lists: they must be defined for specific purposes and can be learned, enhanced, and expanded through training. The process of determining competencies is one of the most important steps in the development of a competency-based program. As this program is student-centered, the student must be directly involved in the process of defining their learning objectives and the set of competencies required for degree completion. This set of competencies is called the “Competency Profile”. This profile determines the focus of the student’s learning and its assessment.
The University of the World offers a general competency profile for a Masters’ degree level, which (with adaptations) can be applied to almost any field of study. It is not a blueprint but a useful guideline. This framework draws on the Degree Qualifications Profile Version 2.0 (DQP) developed by the Lumina Foundation for Education, released in 2013. This framework, with very general competency statements, is organized according to five broad areas of competency learning. Students can use this broad framework and customize it to start refining the Learning Plan. The five broad areas are:
- Intellectual Skills – This category includes analytic inquiry, use of information resources, engaging diverse perspectives, ethical reasoning, quantitative fluency, and communicative fluency.
- Specialized Knowledge – This category addresses what students should demonstrate with respect to their disciplines or fields of study. It includes theoretical and practical knowledge, tools, methodologies, skills, and terminology.
- Broad and Integrative Knowledge – This category asks students to consolidate learning from different broad fields of study – the humanities, arts, sciences, and social sciences – and to discover and explore concepts and questions that bridge these essential areas of learning.
- Applied and Collaborative Learning – This category emphasizes what students can do with what they know, demonstrated by innovation and fluency in addressing unscripted problems at work and in other settings outside the classroom.
- Civic and Global Learning – Recognizing higher education’s responsibilities both to democracy and to the global community, this fifth area of learning addresses the integration of knowledge and skills in applications that facilitate student engagement with and response to civic, social, environmental and economic challenges at local, national and global levels.