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GSD Episode 13: Grace Fowler
37 Plays27 days ago
In this episode, we dig into Competency-Based Education with Grace Fowler, Senior Director of Client Success for the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) to discuss the role that Competency-Based Education is playing in a rapidly changing career and employment landscape.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:02
Speaker
Morning everyone, welcome back to another episode of Getting Stuff Done in Higher Education.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Fritz Vandover,
00:00:21
Speaker
one welcome back to another episode of getting stuff done in higher education fritz vanover with Kelvin Bentley and Kevin Schreiner. As always, happy Friday. We always record on a Friday, if you didn't know that, even though we dropped on Wednesdays. So it's Friday here, sun is shining in Minneapolis. It's above zero. We're happy with that, not everything else. We are joined today by Grace Fowler, who is, me get my titles here correctly, a Senior Director of Client Success at CBEN,
00:00:51
Speaker
the competency-based education network. So Grace, we're very excited to have you here today. Thank you for joining us. um Well, we usually do is you just have people take as much time as you need, but we'll just walk through what has been your path to where you are now in and around higher education. Like what drew you into the space? Why are you here? Yeah, no, appreciate it i'm so I'm so glad to to be on the line with you all. um So i I originally thought I wanted to be a high school English teacher um because in education, I figured that's the only job that existed was teaching. People still think when I tell them what my job is that I'm a teacher. So that's um never been able to outrun that. But I, I graduated with a good amount of like ed theory, but not any classroom practice. So my first role, first couple roles were in college access and success positions where I was able to work directly with high school and college aged people without having to have a teaching license. And, um,
00:02:01
Speaker
doing some direct coaching and and teaching with that, with predominantly um low-income, first-generation students of color, both in the Twin Cities and in the Bay Area. And I learned really quickly that i i love those learners, and I did feel like, in the grand scheme of like, how to address barriers to economic mobility, that higher ed was the the lever that was of most interest to me, but I i knew I couldn't sustain working directly with learners.
Aligning Education with Workforce Needs
00:02:36
Speaker
um
00:02:38
Speaker
And I also had some disillusionment as many people do in the in the like ed nonprofit space where I felt like I understood the reason they exist to support learners that need that support today, but I felt like it didn't put enough pressure on higher ed institutions and systems to evolve to better meet the needs of learners.
00:02:58
Speaker
um So then I was like struck with the question of what is the right lever within the higher ed space? Is it policy? Is it um is it working for an institution?
00:03:11
Speaker
is it some private sector role? And I thought going into grad school, I was like, there's no there's no private sector solution that can drive educational equity. So naturally, I got a job in the private sector working at a higher ed strategy and innovation consultancy, and then really started to see the opportunity that that posed to like, work with institutions that are trying to innovate, that are trying to better serve learners or serve of new learner populations more effectively.
00:03:42
Speaker
um And so have since been in this sort of more ed consulting space, but slowly but surely, Also, as many folks even in the higher ed space get it's like you can't solve a lot of these solutions in higher ed without getting closer and closer to workforce and employers.
00:04:00
Speaker
um And understanding like the influence that we mean the responsiveness that higher ed systems and institutions need to have to what's happening in the workforce.
00:04:12
Speaker
um So I feel like slowly but surely it's like consulting, but closer and closer to the intersection of learning and work, um which has now brought me to my role at CBEN, which, as you mentioned, Fritz, is the the competency-based education network.
Career Reflections and Work-Life Balance
00:04:28
Speaker
um CBEN is the national leader in building systems that connect education to workforce needs. So it's been a good home for me in working with folks that understand how credentials and degrees don't tell the full story of what folks know and can do.
00:04:45
Speaker
Employers need the proof of what those skills are. People deserve a shot to demonstrate that. And so it's been really neat to sort of follow that thread of like, how are we dismantling barriers to economic mobility in bringing learning closer to work and understanding how help there we bridge those more effectively.
00:05:08
Speaker
But- Well, i appreciate you talking about pivot points, you know, think things that made you decide to take one turn versus another, because you've been in some interesting spaces. You've been at, you know, Entangled Solutions and you were in Guild for a while. I mean, what are the things that nudged you to make those moves? And I know there's all sorts of reasons, like maybe one of them wasn't a great place to work or maybe it was the best place to work. But, you know, what are those kinds of in your career?
00:05:38
Speaker
What are the things that have what are the strings you've pulled? um You know, the threads of of interest or opportunity that led you in those in those directions?
00:05:49
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. um i think movement. Anyone that's, um I feel like I talk a lot to folks in like teaching or education nonprofits, like making the pivot out of that into other fields can be a can be tricky. so i was I feel very lucky that grad school helped pave that path for me because it gave me a little bit more opportunity to have direction and build some connections like, um
00:06:21
Speaker
in the Bay, there's some neat things happening. I was able to like, take a look at Minerva. Minerva. Thank you. cut that part out. Like seeing seeing inside Minerva Institute and and Minerva University sort of get a sense of like, what are new models for education, um getting to do some, spending some time also in the business school when I you know was in the ed school and understanding who players were ah working in ed across different industries.
00:06:57
Speaker
So that helped give me some direction and open doors, honestly, to to pivot into consulting. um And then it was ah it's a bit of like, you know, I was at Entangled Solutions for about two years.
00:07:13
Speaker
working on their higher ed innovation um arm of of the the consultancy. And then in about April of the pandemic, we were acquired by Guild.
00:07:26
Speaker
So they basically took all of the entangled folks and we were acquired for our talent, which is helpful yeah because we all got to come along into Guild. And then within Guild,
00:07:38
Speaker
i I can't think of a place where I like learned more in a short period of time, in part because it was moving from a startup into a scale-up. I got to play a lot of different types of roles. like If you look at my my job titles that evolved over time, I had some very sexy ones like solution exploration director, which sounds like i'm an astronaut. but But I think that also gave me a lot of glimpse into um Like within within Guild, I was doing work mostly related to helping institutions in their higher ed marketplace adopt practices that better serve working adult learners. Because for a lot of institutions, that continues to be a new like they they want to meet the needs of those learners, but it's new population for a lot of folks.
00:08:33
Speaker
um And then I also helped support Guild and some of their short form learning strategy, their stackability strategy. So understanding um we have this huge market of short form learning. We have all these certificates. No one knows what those signals mean. So understanding what like digging into with institutions and employers, what types of what types of important signals or skills need to be embedded into those short form learning and also understanding that short form learning couldn't be successful for a lot of learners if it didn't stack.
00:09:12
Speaker
And so understanding how to help across institutions build learning pathways that aligned to these indemand career pathways that we're hearing directly from employers in in the guild sphere so it was really cool to like see and help support the building of this talent marketplace um and so i think getting that vantage point of continuing to see across institutions in the way that my role at Entangled saw, right, because we had clients different sizes, different places, different goals and and learner populations, continuing to see trends across institutions.
00:09:54
Speaker
but being able to see how to support those that cohort of schools in aligning more effectively to employers in service of actually unlocking mobility for the employees of those those companies. So I think that helped me get that like visibility to know, okay, I continue to like to have um a larger ecosystem view of of things as opposed to feeling like it made sense for me personally to embed myself in an individual institution.
00:10:33
Speaker
um The biggest vantage point, like a pivot point for me coming out of Guild was I went on leave with my second child. I went on leave with my first child. There were some big reorgs while I was out on parental leave. Um, so when I went out on parental leave with my second, I thought, ha ha guys, don't do anything crazy while I'm gone. Um, and what'd you say? ah Um, but don't bring it to life. Right. Yeah, exactly.
00:11:04
Speaker
Um, and my boss, uh, Dr. Lisa McIntyre height, um, while I was out on parental leave left and I had so appreciated how she looked at the ecosystem, made sense of it. um And I loved working with her as a person so much. And um for those of you on the call that have kids, when I had my second kid, I was even further in this place of like my priorities of things. I i feel so much like the
00:11:37
Speaker
the highest importance for me right now is really liking who I work and with and trusting who I work with.
Defining and Aligning Education Credentials
00:11:45
Speaker
And I feel very open to doing that anywhere.
00:11:49
Speaker
i feel so lucky. so i So Lisa left and I just thought, um I want to see where she's going. i want to see what she's finding interesting and doing. And I feel so lucky that this is where she went because I love the work I get to do now. And I get to love my colleagues at CBEN and feel like there's such a rich um community of like ah Deep expertise across the team and also just like joyful collaborative people.
00:12:24
Speaker
So I feel like the most recent pivot point in my career has definitely been grounded in like people. i love i had i had so much respect and joy working with my colleagues at Guild too. Um, but I think that for me was, was the highest priority. And, again, I feel very lucky because I also now like, I do like my work so much, um, at a time where i I could have, I was like, is the coffee shop down the road. They seem like cool people all work there. Yeah. yeah It's funny. it's It's interesting. I mean, to hear you actually say
00:13:01
Speaker
that work-life balance, family balance, following following, and not necessarily just following people, but right, both finding the organizations that support who you are. Yeah. Is a lot of what we've talked about on this podcast many times is like, I think a lot of us, especially those of us that have been in a higher education institution, have a hard time leaving that institution regardless of what's going on, just because we don't want to leave and not thinking about our work-life balance and the things that are, that are balancing. So, so kudos to you for,
00:13:37
Speaker
you know, for, for thinking about how you can make what you love to do work and what you love to do work in a place that loves the way that you work, right? Like has, has that balance. I want to go back to something that you said about short form learning.
00:13:57
Speaker
So here's, here's where higher ad I think always has had a poor way of defining anything.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Like we all have a different definition of a micro credential. We all have a different definition of a badge, non-credit, for credit, certificate, certifications, all these types of things. So I'm curious in your work that you've been doing where you were talking about, you know, working with employers and helping them understand short form and then help it. Like, how did you go about thinking about what the definitions are of those? And how did you bridge the gap between multiple institutions having different definitions yeah and trying to equate that to what an employer is saying?
00:14:45
Speaker
Because oftentimes what employers say, like, I just think back 20 years ago, everybody needs soft skills. Nobody can talk, nobody can do these things. And now all of a sudden it's like, we need AI, we need this, we need this, and we need this. It's like businesses are always changing and evolving for what's happening.
00:15:02
Speaker
where they currently are. Higher Ed tends to be teaching what we were teaching back in 1540. right like we're not We're not moving from that standpoint.
00:15:13
Speaker
um So anyways, that's a long ways to say. Curious like how you think about definitions in your workplace and how do you equate those and to the definitions that higher Ed uses?
00:15:26
Speaker
well and like do learners care? Do learners know what the difference is too? And thinking about them as like such a key audience of of trying to help them navigate it too, which was which was interesting. Yeah, I feel like I remember being like, ah, like last mile providers and really focused on like, what is the market of boot camps and certificates and like closing the gap post degree. and um And I do think that
00:16:00
Speaker
The micro-credentials piece too is interesting because it is such a a way of disaggre trying to, i think I think, trying to disaggregate like what is a discrete skill or competency that someone can acquire and how do we package um and validate that they have this like discrete skill. um And the way that we continue to like And, but then we cluster them together and it's like a little cluster of skills. So I think time was such a major way, at least a guild that we tried to make sense of it. If it's less than six, I can't remember exactly, but like if it's less than six weeks, do we feel like that's a micro credential? And then if it's six weeks to two years, then it's a short form, it's like a certificate or short form learning. And then two years it's an associates, but with all of that, like, That also makes an assumption a learner will finish it in that time, unclear.
00:17:01
Speaker
And um it does like surface the, like this ambiguity around like, what is the role that time plays in all of this anyway? um So I think we did have specific categories in no small part because we had to clarify in the product to learners when they're making a decision about what offering is right for them, helping them understand that there are these shorter or like more, consult um yeah, smaller bites of learning that they can, a lot of times we tried to frame as like the first step or for some learners, it's like to stack on top of the degree that you already have, but help you move that little bit further or have the, the evidence to your employer that you can do this additional thing. um
00:17:58
Speaker
So I think categorically we use time, which is so funny now to work in competency-based and be like, what ah what an ineffective way, especially with short form learning where it is, i think,
00:18:12
Speaker
trying to help signal more discrete skills that folks are acquiring as opposed to sort of the full, the full suite that a degree is meant to signal.
Competency-Based Education and Policy
00:18:24
Speaker
um So here's a question for you. And maybe it's something you're advocating for and CBEN is advocating for, but does there need to be a uniform taxonomy for non non-degree credentials meaning not an associate's nor up through a doctorate so it helps that but associates through doctorates there's a definition of them and bachelor's 120 credit hours um associates etc it is so all over the map like you're saying and at guild you were trying to you're trying to least put out what your what what you saw these things as and you were wrestling with is it time-based or what what's under the hood that makes it this that or the other
00:19:09
Speaker
yeah Does the Department Education or some other entity need to define what these things are so that I mean, this is my perspective. I think if, if and I know that ah you you most people pay cash for these things, but not, you know, Title IV federal student loans, but if there's a taxonomy for it, then people, you know, it's like classes of cars. You got your little SUVs, you got your big SUVs, you got your, you know, EVs, sedans, whatever. no one yeah You don't see a lot of innovation. Like, we're going to do a different class of car. You know, yeah there's this, this, this, we're going to make our cars to that.
00:19:49
Speaker
There's a need to be something like that with non-degree credentials so that not only can institutions know where they're aiming, but also learners can be like, oh, this is what i get under the hood of a very short, you know, it's a X number of hours of learning, et cetera, credential.
00:20:11
Speaker
It just makes me wonder what we're solving for in that like, if we're trying to, with with any of our, like, with any of our credentials, if we're trying to solve four helping employers understand what someone, and maybe, and there is learning, just the quick caveat.
00:20:35
Speaker
I understand the value of learning beyond its application in the workforce. I think we're all here because we know like higher ed, at least we believe, right, that there is like many purposes that higher ed. Bigger than the sum of its parts.
00:20:48
Speaker
But I do think that for for short form learning, a lot of the evolution of short form learning is trying to solve for workforce readiness, like all of those boot camps, trying to to tailor ah like people to enter a specific job. These short form learning that are,
00:21:08
Speaker
associated with acquiring a specific skill or set of skills typically are in service of trying to apply that in a workforce setting. And my worry about spinning up a taxonomy, like if we take a step back, it's how are we just largely making sure, one that employer whatever the whatever the vessel is, that employers know how to ingest and interpret it and have trust in it.
00:21:39
Speaker
um And for the learner, that they have confidence that spending time on that learning is going to be relevant to their to their next step. um And my I see the value that you're describing and like, can a taxonomy help build that trust and clarify that space?
00:22:04
Speaker
But I wonder if it's really more like, think we at Seben have this idea that we could really solve for that trust, that a that um that clarity, if we have some shared perspective around that.
00:22:22
Speaker
what skills someone has, what are their competencies, regardless of where they learned it? um And how how do we more make sure that that that part of it is is transparent as opposed to over-indexing potentially on the vessel itself?
00:22:42
Speaker
Oh, I hear you. If the currency is skills or competencies, whatever you want to call it, um does that actually like take away the urgency of having the right name for certain vessels, certain classifications of cars, if we're able to give greater transport ah like portability and transparency around what they're actually able to do. But I think we've gone down that road a little bit with Workforce Pell, right? So with Workforce Pell, the federal government defined short-term programs as a certain percentage of clock hours.
00:23:20
Speaker
And this is where I think this is And so this is where to me, this is the confusion within comp and And you can correct me if I'm totally off base, but to me, this is the confusion between competency based education and now the things that higher ed defines as the short curricular components. Right. So now because Workforce Pell is available and they've said, you know, short term programs, X number of clock hours.
00:23:49
Speaker
Now people are gonna look at that and go, well, and I'm making an assumption, i can't judge whether Sally really knows the skillset of accounting to give her credit, because how do I equate that skillset of accounting to clock hours, right? It's it's like we're we're now making, and it's the same as like credit to go to credit hours, right? Like that's always been the biggest issue with competency-based education, prior learning experience, all those types of things is how do you equate this this knowledge base to a credit hour, to a form of giving somebody a direction to go forward without giving them a test or making them pay for an assessment or, or do all it And so I think a little bit as it's gotten, I love that we're doing Workforce Pell, but I think Workforce Pell actually makes this conversation more difficult because now more and more schools are going to align themselves to what these
00:24:46
Speaker
our expectations are. It's just like before we started this podcast, we were talking about the three-year undergraduate degree. We're so locked into four years. Well, you know if if I went to school fall, spring, summer for three years, I would finish a four-year degree in three years.
00:25:02
Speaker
right like It's still possible is possible still to do everything that's required in four years, 120 credits in three if I just went full-time, never quit, fall, spring, summer,
00:25:13
Speaker
And my institution provided all the courses that I needed in the summer to do my curriculum, like all that kind of stuff, right? Like there's ways to get around all of those types of things. I'm sorry, I'm to ramble on stuff because. No, please.
00:25:25
Speaker
I transfer credit, adult learners, like this whole population of people, you know, the 40 some million that started school, never finished a credential.
00:25:38
Speaker
I think we just create, we just keep piling on and on and on all these different levels of expectations that we're missing.
00:25:49
Speaker
How to serve them better yeah versus trying to align. Okay. Now this has to match to this and this has to go to this. i think that's really what your network is trying to do, right? Like it's trying, you're trying to help all these people.
00:26:02
Speaker
say, well, Sally knows this knowledge from accounting. She doesn't need to take accounting 101 because she's actually done it in her job. But then i as an institution, saying, no, I need Sally to take my my final exam that I would give to a to my accounting 101 course. and if she can pass that, then I'll give her the credit.
00:26:21
Speaker
Right. How do we balance that? Yeah. um that That's just it. i think So competency-based ed focused on actual student learning and the application of that learning rather than time spent in class or time spent on material.
00:26:39
Speaker
You progress when you demonstrate mastery. And I think that the um at the scenario you're describing, Kevin, of all of these people with all of this robust experience, but no way to get credit for that or signal that or all of these existing barriers to their progress despite already having such a robust skill set is is a part of what drives us to to encourage those more competency-based or skills-based approaches because it allows, there's this real focus in CBE around um
00:27:27
Speaker
ah but around skills validation, validating that experience. How do you have the right robust systems of assessing someone on their existing skill set and making sure that those validated skills can be trusted and applied both in learning and or at work?
00:27:46
Speaker
And I do think that like, if we're only trying to solve for like, like um the credit application towards that prior learning, then we miss the like portability of that learning across the two so the two spheres, across learning and their employment too. um I would argue that like if we if we moved from credit for prior learning, recognition of prior learning, prior learning assessment towards credit for competency,
00:28:20
Speaker
you not only give folks way more opportunity to be able to to validate and and have validated and assessed assessed and validated and trusted the skills that they're bringing to apply towards a credential, because you're able to say, oh, these are the competencies they already have.
00:28:40
Speaker
um And so it's a clearer picture as opposed to like this competency, maybe it's like, 207 and negotiat you know marketing 305 and trying to get down into the weeds of like, how does this translate to like reviewing curriculum to try to match it, but actually are then able to say, no like you bring negotiation skills and you have competency 12 negotiation and can can keep moving
00:29:11
Speaker
moving forward without having to do so much repetition of existing coursework to try to prove what you already have. And the other value of that too, is those kinds of competencies could exist in a learning employment record. It could be a more powerful and clear signal to an employer who may not be able to ingest the set of psych 207 and marketing 305 or whatever, and understand what that means that they can do. But they say grace has negotiation. Like, if I'm looking to hire someone with negotiation skills, it's been validated. She has that and she can carry that with her. um
00:29:51
Speaker
Cause I think, yeah, this sort of like never ending degree process, we all agree that this isn't working, um but i do worry about if we're trying to solve that with just having the new taxonomy of short form learning or um using traditional credit for prior learning application, then we miss the ability to actually build responsive systems. So trying to, trying to solve for all of that.
00:30:22
Speaker
So let's get into the weeds somewhere to get, let's get, you know, yeah, let's get into the weeds a bit. So tell us about some of the institutions, you don't to name them, but what are the kinds of institutions that are engaging with CBAN and really leaning into this, um,
00:30:42
Speaker
and and really seeing the opportunity and and going for it? um On the higher ed side, because CBIN, in our, so CBIN,
00:30:55
Speaker
where we have a global network, and that includes institutions, it includes state agencies, associations and accreditors.
00:31:06
Speaker
um employers so it ah has folks kind of across the skills first ecosystem that are working on this when it comes to the institutions that we typically have at the table um a lot of them are folks who work with working adult learners or like surf adult adult learner populations a lot of them so a lot of community colleges um but we have honestly we have R1 institutions we have that are that are adopting competency-based approaches. I mean, University of Kansas is like totally leading the R1 charge on CVE. And then we also have like systems and consortia that are trying to figure out whether they're
00:31:53
Speaker
like through pilots or through collaborative offerings, how to leverage CBE to meet some of their regional or state workforce needs. So I would say there's like, there's a lot of individual institutions who are, um who are called to, to figure out how to meet their, their learners needs, or they have a good like,
00:32:18
Speaker
impetus to try to to work closely and lock step with their regional or local employers to solve some workforce gaps. So that's a big driver. i would also say tons of schools of nursing or other um other schools that their accreditor or their um their ah like associations are encouraging the adoption of this.
00:32:44
Speaker
um There are some states like in Texas There's been some legislation that's been advancing the adoption of CBE and so that puts a lot of um sort of momentum behind folks in that region to to explore and adopt competency-based practices. So some of it's sort of like top-down influence and some of it really is like we have these learners and we're seeing how some of these innovative approaches better meet their
Industry and State-Level Initiatives
00:33:13
Speaker
needs. Also a number of like theological ed um institutions we're seeing.
00:33:20
Speaker
adopting for their like pastoral ed programs and seeing how much um though the there's some fields where the degree is is becoming less required but the competencies are still required for the job those are good places where we're seeing folks leaning into competency-based practices as well so so how are nursing programs thinking about competency-based um a lot so the um American Association of Colleges of Nursing has been really supporting institutions in adopting competency-based practices. They have their essential skills for the field.
00:34:02
Speaker
um And because there are this set of competencies and um levels of mastery with behavioral indicators, like because those are all,
00:34:13
Speaker
drafted and built out. It's really about helping institutions know how to operationalize that in practice. um So it's another one. creditor is in Their accreditor is green lighting this. That's a big a big part of it, I imagine. Right. That's a huge that's a huge push to yeah to adopt, for sure. And and we're seeing like.
00:34:35
Speaker
Cover and runway, right? They like, oh, our accreditor is on board with this. We can really explore this. Yeah, yeah. and um And nursing is such a, I feel like nursing teaching where we have these major workforce gaps.
00:34:52
Speaker
um So like huge demand for folks to move into those roles and um this real, like and
00:35:05
Speaker
So there's like desire to explore a new way and both roles that require honestly a lot of like hands-on learning components and the actual application in context of the skills that you're learning in the classroom. Those are particular fields I feel like where people are more open to new ways and new new approaches to solving for those workforce gaps, motivated to shorten the time, even though there's the caveat there of like, just because it's competency based doesn't mean that someone takes less time.
00:35:41
Speaker
um And we've seen also a lot of neat like apprenticeship, like competency based apprenticeship models in that space too. I know you all had um Erin Crisp on a couple months ago to talk about some of the work she was doing in Tennessee, but um I think those, those fields are, are primed for folks to adopt new, more effective ways of of getting folks trained up that are actually ready to do the job by the time they graduate as well. So we know in nursing, that's also another big challenge is that they found that um a lot of nurses are showing up not actually job ready on day one.
00:36:21
Speaker
And um Kelvin, yes, 4848, the House Bill 4848 in Texas was the there policy I was talking about. Yeah, it's it's interesting. I'm really glad that you brought up the Texas example because um several years ago, I worked for a community college, you know specifically Tarrant County Community College District.
00:36:44
Speaker
And at the time that we joined CBEN is when you know South Texas College and um Texas A&M Commerce, um what you know they were kind of the leaders in terms of you know, receiving some grant funds to experiment with CBE initiatives.
00:37:03
Speaker
And so it's great to see that Texas is also trying to open the aperture a bit and, you know, open the floodgates a little bit more with other options. But I have so many questions for you today. i'm not sure I'll be able to get to them all, but I'm just wondering, like, there's a lot of things that are in alignment, right? You've you've already kind of talked about like apprenticeships. Mm-hmm. You talked about LERs, learner employment records. like I feel like we're all kind of like in this, within the ecosystem, there's lots of initiatives that are really helping us, again, think about skill development. How can we actually empower the learner to have some agency?
00:37:44
Speaker
in terms of being able to, um you know, demonstrate or at least have tools to show that, hey, I do have knowledge from, you know, a job or skills from a previous job or from volunteerism. um You know, maybe I didn't actually, like Kevin mentioned, maybe i went to college for a little bit, but I actually, in the interim, you know, after I dropped out,
00:38:10
Speaker
I have skills that need to be recognized. So, you know, one one question I have for you is like, how do we actually get to um the end goal, right? Where skills are currency and we recognize them.
00:38:26
Speaker
You know, how do we... um you know given CBEN's work, maybe at a policy level, what are you seeing given our current administration, you know their openness or willingness to you know maybe look at the reauthorization of the Higher Ed Act? you know Can we, for example, are you seeing you know any conversations around maybe us moving away from our dependency on the credit hour model, which kind of continues, as you mentioned, it continues to like shackle us in terms of thinking about newer models, right? Such that we get these abominations called three the three-year... A bachelor's degree, nonsense, as Kevin mentioned. And so, um but we'd just love to hear your thoughts because I feel like in terms of levers, because I think we you were talking about earlier,
00:39:17
Speaker
policy is how we really start to do big things, right? Versus the the things that we're doing now, which is great, but it's but it's still like a little bit here, a little bit there. So how can we, you know, just interested in your thoughts about like on on a policy front, yeah how do we get to that end goal, that end state that we want, which is, again, we recognize skills regardless of where they are acquired.
00:39:45
Speaker
Yeah. yeah um
00:39:50
Speaker
Yeah. Few thoughts. I think the the first is certainly that um there's there's opportunity because of the and like
00:40:07
Speaker
the administrations. I do think that this there's good conditions for some flex, like flexibility to embrace um new models that are so workforce aligned because so much of the driver of some of the skills-based practices are so that learning can speak more effectively to work um i think there's those conditions are are are pretty good i think where i've personally seen some good movement is one um
00:40:43
Speaker
like state level efforts to drive these, like build talent marketplaces that are supported by um competency framework. And then also some coalition building amongst institutions to put pressure on accreditors. On the state level front, I do think that we've seen states like Alabama, we've seen in Arkansas, like states trying to explore what it looks like to build statewide talent marketplaces in Alabama for for their talent triad um that brings together in one place employers, um learning providers, and residents of Alabama.
00:41:28
Speaker
there's this um legislatively enacted and governed talent marketplace. So it has very clear governance structures and accountability to the state to verify like, what are in demand skills, how to help employers build skills-based job descriptions, help institutions art um contribute to a compendium of um what's it called? Compendium of Validated Credentials. I'm getting the acronym wrong. but like They have a compendium of credentials that say, if we confirm as the governance of this talent marketplace that if you completed this credential, we believe you have these competencies.
00:42:15
Speaker
And so having this sort of like statewide agreement around what learning yeah ah leads to what competency and for then employers to be able to ingest and understand that a resident with that competency is ready to do this thing. That state level and statewide effort and policy, I think, that's a powerful way to like support institutions in the state to then buy into the fact that they need to figure out how to, um, have those powerful signals to get into that compendium of credentials.
00:42:54
Speaker
I think compendium of value to credentials is what it's called. And then, um, so I do think this sort of like this statewide efforts have been really interesting to see evolve too. And, um,
00:43:06
Speaker
that that putting some fire behind skills-based, like the wide wider spread of skills-based practices. And then I think like accreditors are such an interesting um factor in all of this too.
00:43:22
Speaker
Having that accreditor leadership to to push out the encouragement of adopting competency-based practices is powerful, but so is a group of institutions coming together to say,
00:43:36
Speaker
um you know, either for ah but like professional accreditor or institutional accreditor, um we really want to to um move away from that time-based requirement.
00:43:51
Speaker
That's also been a neat shift for um or the expansion of the adoption of competency-based practices too. Yeah. And so so a quick follow up for you. Could you because you've you've kind of like teed us up to then maybe talk a little bit if you can about CBEN's, the competency based education networks, recent award of a FIPC grant.
00:44:18
Speaker
um around accreditation so um you know i'm sure uh some of our listeners may not really know about that or or maybe would love to learn more about it for those who who you know saw it in the news so i want so much to be able to talk about it and i don't know if we're allowed to publicly get into the details of it yet gotcha okay One thing that we did, CBIN has large annual convening, allowed a large conference called CBE Exchange. um
00:44:53
Speaker
This year it's September 30th to October 2nd or 3rd. But we have this annual convening for our community.
Employer Engagement and Skill Validation
00:45:02
Speaker
What we announced last year in um
00:45:09
Speaker
wow, now I'm forgetting where it was.
00:45:13
Speaker
Amy Nunez- Anyway, we're what Oh Arizona we allow announced in Arizona last year was this the launch of call assurance. Amy Nunez- Which is our response to the fact that there's not yet a very powerful signal for a lot of these competency based and skills based offerings so an attempt. Nunez- led by my colleague, Lori dodge, who is the provost who was a provost at UMass global before coming to see Ben.
00:45:42
Speaker
is trying to help create that signal in the marketplace of using CBEN's quality framework in our understanding of powerful skills based practices and competency based ed. How do we help folks that are doing really powerful programming in using those methods, the signal to the field, to learners that if they're trying to leverage competency-based practices that that institutions or organizations or ed tech companies that are have offerings in that space can have that powerful signal that that currently doesn't quite exist in the marketplace around skills-first offerings. So we're excited to to launch that in in November of last year.
00:46:34
Speaker
I think that's a good pivot point for me. to So you're talking about offerings for learners. We're back to like, what is the vessel? let's talk about the uptake by employers.
00:46:47
Speaker
um
00:46:50
Speaker
What's what, what are they asking? I don't know. Employers is a it's, it's a very broad thing that you can you've got mom and pop companies up to multinational corporations, they're all employers.
00:47:01
Speaker
What are they, how how are you all intersecting with employers at various scales? What are they asking for? you know what What role are you playing in what they're trying to get from all of this too, as as a employers that these learners will hopefully get roles in and seek out?
00:47:21
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, CBN is certainly poised to support with some of that like skills-based hiring skills-based talent management um support and like ah any sort of like L&D related using skills-based practices. I think the biggest places that we've collaborated with employers is more on like how um how workforce boards and agencies are being engaged in some of that statewide marketplace, talent marketplace building.
00:47:57
Speaker
um And then also making sure that they're more embedded in the efforts that our institutional partners, our association partners, like making sure that there's um employers more effectively engaged in the process.
00:48:18
Speaker
So, for example, we did we did a big project to explore skills-based alternatives to traditional math remediation pathways. And um even though we're talking about like math remediation, post-secondary math remediation, like we got to have employers at the table to help tell us like, If we're trying to make math feel relevant to their to a learner's degree pathway to their own, um like in their own lives and make it feel applicable to them, how do we make sure that we're working in closer lockstep with employers and that surface things like math departments were making a lot of assumptions about.
00:49:00
Speaker
Oh, my learner needs to know how to um how to graph these numbers. And we had an employer say, well, we have tech that graphs the numbers. I need someone who knows how to interpret it.
00:49:13
Speaker
And then you totally have this shifted paradigm of like, what actually about the math the learner needs to have to make it relevant on the job. So we've been trying to also just encourage across our projects, same with things like credit for prior learning strategies, and you're trying to build and expand pathways to recognize prior learning, doing that without employers at the table or trying to think about how you meet your local or regional demand to create those pathways in and out of your institution, we feel like it's missing a huge part of the puzzle.
00:49:51
Speaker
So i feel like, um Like we have in bringing those employers together, it's more of that, like, how do we keep building that interconnectivity and partnership for the most part?
00:50:03
Speaker
Yeah, because what i you know, there, we've talked about this before in other episodes, there's a lot of these initiatives that in states for government, state government roles to reduce the, ah Reliance on the bachelor's degree is a signal. you know These things usually come from on high. you know ah Yeah, Fritz, I feel like two years ago when I so came to your office, that's what we were talking about. We were like, all right, Twin Cities, the government's saying you don't need a degree, but like now what do we do? Right. and And I feel like since there's been I've seen stuff in Inside Higher Ed and other things that they do that they make these proclamations yet that it doesn't you don't see that in the hiring trends are still most they're still largely going with bachelor's degree or whatever the base, the the base credential might be is is still the the floor. yeah So because that's that was the root of my question is with employers, they have to be at the table. It sounds like you're one you're working to do that. But what i
00:51:01
Speaker
It's, of course, it's not, ah it's, this is going to sound like a blanket statement. I don't want it to be, but I feel like private sector, any employer, public and private sector have relied on higher ed if and education for a very long time is like, okay, you're going to give us this really prepared workforce people.
00:51:16
Speaker
yeah Great. We want you to do that. Here's what we want. yeah We'll see on the other side when you deliver them and you know For a long time, there were a lot of companies that... I mean i went through this. I worked for Anderson Consulting right out of college in 1998. They didn't just hire econ majors and computer science majors. I was a history major. who was good in math.
00:51:36
Speaker
They sent you this campus out in Chicagoland for like two weeks. They basically acculturated you and got you up to speed on... like I never done computer coding. and i i learned COBOL and other stuff. so There was an immense investment in ah educating, basically creating the workforce. You wanted people to come up with the raw skills or very refined skills and you get them up to where you want them. And I feel like corporations, especially are are drawing back from that because it's not cheap. Uh, even though the investment helps retain workers in the long run. So I feel like there's this increasing reliance on higher ed Give us what we want as far as a yeah really well-prepared workforce.
00:52:16
Speaker
but you know we're going to lambast you if it's not what we want. But yeah and the distance between them is growing. So I would hope there's not and hope that distance is shrinking, at least in the competency-based education space.
00:52:31
Speaker
Yeah, because the other the other pickle,
00:52:36
Speaker
how effective are employers at articulating what they want? how certain How confident are they in what what their needs are? That's its whole other line of of work that I think is really hard for them to land on. If they're trying to like in a job um description help articulate too, like what does the person need to be effective on the job? I think that's that's its own challenge.
00:53:02
Speaker
um But I do think that there's um there's a real emphasis and there's work being done by my um by my colleagues, Amber Garrison, Nunkin Emily Shines to like figure out how do we, through coalition building and collaboration, build greater trust in skills to help bring us more effectively to the table, in part because um it's hard to articulate what skills you need and what skills you need today might be different in six months. And that's it. So like, I acknowledge that that's its own challenge for employers that they're facing right now.
00:53:43
Speaker
um But how do we have greater confidence and trust in skills if we can move to this sort of future state where skills can be that currency and we know, all right, this experience, I'm able to provide evidence and have it validated that I can do, that I know and can do a certain thing.
00:54:08
Speaker
And that can have happened at an institution. it can happen a certain from being a parent, it could happen from volunteering, it could have happened on the job. And then you, Fritz, when you were getting the, when you were in Chicagoland and you were getting all trained up, you would be able to walk out of that and have greater confidence and like, this is, be able to articulate more effectively. This is now what I can do because I went through this internal training that that my employer offered to me. If we're able to see that skills first future where um The skill moves with you.
00:54:40
Speaker
Employers can understand it. Institutions can understand it. Learner can understand it. I think the first major step that Amber and and Emily and and a lot of partners across the space on the employer side, um like military and and ah like governmental side, state state agency side, like trying to build some of that coalition building, It starts with having a really strong point of view, a shared point of view on how we how we build that trust as a starting point too. Because all of these obstacles are super real, but if we're able to start to have a shared acknowledgement of that currency, could we then...
00:55:24
Speaker
could that set the stage for, for us moving closer to that future too. And I think that goes to exactly what Kelvin was saying with, with a learner record, right? Like where's, where's the, and and I love that you threw out the military.
00:55:37
Speaker
I think the military hands down does the best job of recording people's skillsets throughout their entire career. I mean, you literally, you join,
00:55:51
Speaker
Everything you ever do, every job you've ever had and the skill sets and and what you know is associated with that. What do we do with it in higher ed? Nothing. Right? like And I'm making a broad statement. Higher ed does nothing with military records to say, oh, well, yeah, that person actually had to to know all these mathematical skill sets in order to to launch that rocket in the proper place and all. like But we give no credit, like there's nothing. We give six credits for PE, great, because you went through you went through through boot camp.
00:56:28
Speaker
Anyways, I say all that just to say, to me, that's like that's the missing piece. and I know there's a lot of work being done out there and in the learner record and trying to do that. But it does go to your point of how many businesses do we have? How many hundreds of thousands of businesses do we have? and now have to document in some way skills that people are learning. Yeah. Because you can't have it a person do it, right? Because if the person does it, it's just our like our LinkedIn pages. Who's validating that I actually can do what I say I can do?
00:56:55
Speaker
Yeah. And then you have the institutions that to have their own set of the way that they want to do this. And so bringing those things together and getting all of those entities together into a learner record to be able to say, yes, if you go work for Goldman Sachs and you do X and da, da, da,
00:57:12
Speaker
here's validation that these are the skill sets that you actually know. but I can also see from a employer perspective, they don't want to say that because they don't want their employees to leave. i took to to Fritz's point, he was trained up how to do this job.
00:57:29
Speaker
i have a skill set now. I can go take and market somewhere else. So there's a little bit of a push and pull to how well do I document and train because I don't want someone, I want to train them, but I only want to train them like specifically what I know you need to do on my job, not a broader context. Anyways, I just, to me, that's like the missing, that was a long way to say the military does it gangbusters really well in documenting skills.
00:57:55
Speaker
The rest of us need to figure out how, how to do that. Yeah. And having worked, worked, um, across some, uh, across both like regional, um,
00:58:07
Speaker
institutions that are trying to collaborate to work on credit for prior learning um having those military jsts is like for folks it's been a real like low-hanging fruit because it's so much easier to be able to ingest that and and more mechanisms to interpret what that military experience is while acknowledging what you're saying which is there's a long way to go and there's a lot of um There's a challenge, I think, too, for folks in the military who are trying to actually transition to different industries.
00:58:38
Speaker
And they have this like military experience and a harder time, even now, saying how that experience is actually very applicable to, to like, if they were in engineering. to the domestic world of what they're doing. Right, now right, right. I mean, ACE credit helps a little bit, right? Like the ACE alignment and stuff like that. But then again, have lot schools that are like, yeah we're not touching ACE. That's not... it's not Like, I don't know, there's just a lot of just, higher ed just needs to get over themselves. But it it brings up the question, Kevin, of like, training who who is that trusted validator the skills? And if it lives only in the employer, to your point, then we do risk um the employer appetite ah to to do that validation. um
00:59:26
Speaker
So i I do think that's the right question of like, where where might that trusted validation function live.
AI in Competency-Based Education
00:59:37
Speaker
So we have a Pepsi grant, you can figure that out. So one question I have and is ah we haven't talked about AI yet and not that we have to. Oh yeah.
00:59:47
Speaker
Is AI disrupting, what role is it playing in yeah competency-based education? Is it disrupting lots of things and creating opportunities, but is it complicating these efforts?
00:59:59
Speaker
i I actually think that it's a there it's a bit of a, actually a really good pairing. The reason being that um to demonstrate mastery of something, right? To like demonstrate that you have mastery of a competency, we need authentic performance-based assessments of that skill, that competency. And I do think that if we're if we're seeing AI as a power tool that you need to be able to learn how to use effectively to make sure that you're not using that power tool dangerously, right?
01:00:43
Speaker
um If we think of of AI as like the tool that it is, then actually you can build those authentic performance-based assessments that are actually measuring what you want the learner to be able to know and do.
01:00:58
Speaker
um even in a world where AI exists, right? So, um okay, ai I give you an assignment to write an essay. Well, I can use ai to write the essay and you don't know that I wrote the essay. Well, then we built the assignment wrong, right? Like, what are you what the the assessment that you built was an essay. I can use AI to write the essay for me.
01:01:24
Speaker
i didn't quite learn what you were hoping for me to learn. It's really maybe more of an issue with the assessment itself as opposed to um the existence of AI in this in the world. It exists.
01:01:38
Speaker
We should be able to make sure that folks have the skill sets they need to use it effectively if it's going to be a big part of their life, of their their job, of their personal life. um And so we should be designing from a consency competency-based ed perspective, designing those performance-based assessments to authentically reflect how you how you apply a skill set in practice.
01:02:02
Speaker
So i'm not sure I didn't want to come at it like it's it's a it's a negative thing, it's a deficit thing, ai but there's lots of AI uses and running, we talked about this last week, and running expertise, getting to the,
01:02:16
Speaker
purporting to be an expert in something when you're not yet, is people seeing it as a way to end run. But, so that was part of my question is, is
01:02:27
Speaker
you know, does it complicate validating? but I like what you're saying. It actually helps validate competency-based experiences, you know, the competencies and skills that people have. Yeah. um Of course there's going to be people who try to cheat on everything, I suppose, but this is good. this is what I was hoping here is that actually it's a tool to to to help with validation. Yeah. And CBE allows us to provide the framework. Like what are the competencies, clear competencies,
01:02:56
Speaker
rigorous, authentic performance-based assessment, mastery-based progression. ai is as ah maybe actually in this world where we have like competency-based approaches and learning skills validation in the workplace, AI can kind of also power that because we can be more have more data-driven personalization at scale.
01:03:20
Speaker
um But AI brings the scalability and doesn't necessarily from from my vantage point work against it if we have those clear skills, frameworks, and assessments, and um concepts of the the progression.
01:03:38
Speaker
So like if anything, they may help, that it may like support creating a system where work and and learning can be more aligned at scale. um And we have a stronger point of view on what are those like deeply human things that people need to know and do and not see AI as a way of cheating at those things if we've been able to figure out what what those skills are and and how to actually assess them.
01:04:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:11
Speaker
Yeah. So i mean, i've shared this I share all the same hopes and all the same concerns that I'm sure many people have about um about the role of AI right now. But in terms of its relationship to CBE, I actually think they work quite well together.
01:04:30
Speaker
ah Do you have people in so in CBEN who are engaged in that? How do we leverage this for for the goal of competency-based education? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think um a part part of it, ah like any work that we're doing in partnership with states to like figure out how to scale competency frameworks and scale like statewide talent marketplaces, there's a degree to which we we leverage AI to to help the develop those
01:05:07
Speaker
skills-based job descriptions or, um, help automate where we can some of the lift that it takes to run like a talent marketplace. But then also i think it, it's like woven into some of this work with, um, developing performance-based assessments. Like i think you got just helping folks, um,
01:05:36
Speaker
see AI as that power tool, even in building their own assessments and scaling their own offerings. Like how can how can we help our clients and our members think about new ways that they can leverage AI in their work, their curriculum design, you know, um their efforts to scale personalization on their campus. Like I do think that helping in our own work to to train and support institutions that are embracing competency-based practices, helping them see the tool that it can be is also just sort of embedded in the work that we have.
01:06:20
Speaker
Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, it's interesting. I've been hearing that you know Western Governors University, for example, is kind of looking at leveraging AI more. And you know there's maybe some worries that internally that you folks who are instructional designers may may no longer be needed, right? Because AI could maybe generate some original content or to some extent.
01:06:48
Speaker
not not that the human needs to be dropped from the loop, but, but you know, it'll be interesting just to see how mega universities like WGU leverage AI in terms of some of their business processes and structural design processes.
01:07:06
Speaker
there Yeah, I mean, there's there are ways that AI can also, like, in the either in the curriculum design or just, like, in the...
01:07:19
Speaker
delivery of the instruction can unlock some flexibility for faculty to to really lean into the more human parts of their jobs. um I'm thinking about like tools that help them grade more effectively, evaluate, like we have these tech platforms too that like allow you to um look at and evaluate evidence of learning that through a simulation or another performance-based assessment, if every one of your learners is is doing that, can feel like ah a huge daunting task, right? If every learner has to spend 30 minutes performing a specific competency,
01:08:03
Speaker
and your responsibility is to grade all of your learners. I see how to like faculty feel overwhelmed by some of those requirements of an effective competency-based program, but there's a lot of tech tools that leverage AI to help with personalized feedback. um um Some of that, like allowing them to just plug in on the areas of their expertise and building the relationships with learners and lightening the load of delivering on some of those really high quality authentic assessments. So we've we've also seen conversely, like how how can AI help free up elements of curriculum design or delivery um to help faculty or or instructors focus on other parts of their job as opposed to seeing it as like being totally automated out of existence.
01:09:01
Speaker
Coursera is doing a lot in that space, trying to increase and improve, increase the number of and improve the types of assessments that are available because. Yeah.
01:09:12
Speaker
So that it's um still a really effective learning experience, but it's gets away from just everything being multiple choice. You know you can have natural. natural conversations with ah with AI when a ah learner is putting in an answer to a question or describing something of for a case study or whatever. it's just, it allows for more faculty-like interactions. And I know there's some people might say, oh, that's that's a wrong use of it, et cetera. But you know it isn't people, it's a bot, but it's a balance to be struck, but it does help allow the scale that
01:09:48
Speaker
these things promise online learning and others so that then in theory, time can be collapsed and also the expense to learners can be collapsed so that, you know, people get where they want to go faster without the expense of say a four-year degree or whatever.
Future of Competency-Based Education
01:10:06
Speaker
So, um, it's an, it's an interesting time to be in this world, especially like the three of us or the four Kevin had to drop off, but,
01:10:17
Speaker
you know, we all kind of span this emergence of this world, smartphones and internet, et cetera. So it's really me to watch, to to make, to move over these, um to move through this landscape and to see like what it was and what it is now. It's, it's a dizzying, but certainly interesting.
01:10:37
Speaker
Yeah. And ideally, and you know, ideally competency-based models, like allow us to stay more flexible. as because things change so much and the sort of the ability to modularize and move move competencies in and out of of offerings based on where where needs evolve, I think is sort of a part of the, ah part of them again, alignment that that competency-based ed offers for for this degree of change and uncertainty.
01:11:15
Speaker
a good place to, I think, to sum up our conversation today. um Grace, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate the time and the perspectives. We will watch and watch what CBEN is doing and what you're doing and and look forward to hopefully this landscape continuing to build out. Kelvin, I know you're you're in it, so you'll be part of that and you'll you know you'll keep us surprised too, but thank you so much and have a great rest your weekend.
01:11:45
Speaker
Thanks, y'all.