Competency-Based Education: Craze or Way Forward for Online Learning?

Competency-based education (CBE) is getting a lot of attention. Defined by personalized learning and "authentic" assessment, advocates position CBE as a powerful toolkit to address some of higher education's biggest challenges- namely, high tuition, low completion and vague/uneven student outcomes. It could be argued that these challenges are relevant for "traditional" online learning, too. Amid the hype, what is truly distinctive about the new generation of CBE programs, and is CBE really a mainstream solution or a more specialized one? Is CBE the right way forward for online degree programs? This presentation will examine different forms of CBE, enrollment trends and evidence of student demand. CBE will be placed in the context of online higher education enrollment trends and wider higher education "innovation" discussions, extolling everything from adaptive learning to bootcamps.