@jordan I think I may have an idea that fits this grant.
There’s been a lot of talk in the product group about competency-based education. Although it hasn’t been decided how this should be incorporated into the platform yet, I think we might be able to use existing features to jumpstart the progress. This is what I have in mind:
Course authors use tags to align parts of their course to particular competencies or skills (this functionality exists)
We design a dashboard that displays to learners how competent they are in a specific skill based on what course / course content they have completed successfully
I’ve added some screenshots from other services to show how they implemented something similar (Duolingo, Exercism, Khan Academy etc). I’ve also included a screenshot of a dashboard from the Open edX mobile app that we could use for inspiration
@Ali Thanks Ali, I reached out by email but I’ll comment on the proposal as well. I like the competency based learning approach and think there’s a lot of potential to expand on this work down the line. I’m wondering though how we can highlight the “innovative approach” angle or perhaps something related to the data behind it or impact on learner engagement and completion? If anyone has other ideas on this, please feel free to chime in. I think the scope could even be expanded slightly for the grant.
This will take some brainstorming. It’s on my to do list.
In the meantime, I wanted to know if you think it would be worth investigating creating courses (the actual content) for this grant? Perhaps something similar to:
WGU has written in asking us to meet with them in order to create something LabXChange like (at least, UI wise) and I suspect the underlying desire is going to be creating competency-based learning, which will have big implications for UI/UX design. Either way, WGU is dead set on making competency-based education a big feature of the platform, so I think before we consider doing anything in particular here, we should query them about it. They’ve been doing it in various forms for a long time and would be the team to ask about what they’d like to see in the platform to make this happen.
As for the courses, that’s not normally within our wheelhouse. Not to say we can’t, but it’s possible that there’s something we could adapt rather than create from scratch, and, again, WGU may be a resource here.
Great to hear that WGU is a strong advocate for CBE! I’m really curious to hear their ideas. I’ll watch the recording of next week’s meeting to stay up to speed on all the product updates.
Make sense. Let’s put this idea on the back burner for now, and I’ll revisit it if it seems worth pursuing in the future.
Is there a specific deadline for submitting proposals to the Vietsch Foundation? I ask because it might make sense to wait for WGU’s “wish list” to help guide which features we propose. Does the timeline allow for that?
@Ali The submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis, so there’s no rush in terms of an actual deadline. I agree it makes sense to find out the wish list first so we can align the proposal if it makes sense to.
Hey @jordan. I thought I’d give you a quick update:
I’m busy collecting wish list items from educators on this forum thread. Once I’ve collected a few, I plan to go through them and see if any would be suitable for the Vietsch grant. Watch this space!
Hey @jordan. I’ve been thinking about ways to make the idea I posted previously more innovative. I came up with a few ideas, but am not sure if any are right for this grant, or if they’re innovative enough!:
Allow learners to “level up” in a skill, unlocking advanced content, or community challenges
Add a leader board where learners’ progress is displayed in relation to their peers’
Build a “skills transcript” that learners can export or share with employers
Add a way for learners to connect completed competencies to real job postings
Alternatively, we could go a different route, and perhaps propose some kind of interactive problem design. Here are a few examples of interactive problems from other providers:
