Teach us! How are you using Canvas for Competency-Based Education?

[BenFriedman]

As a Canvas Learning Outcomes team member, the Washington Post article presented an opportunity for a reflective moment. Our team’s mission is to help make Learning Outcomes meet your needs! It was also great to see some recent InstructureCon 2021 sessions on using Outcomes for related areas such as standards-based grading or Mastery Paths to personalize pacing in CBE courses.

Competency-Based Education starts with defining end Outcomes that clearly state what students should know and be able to do over the course of their learning. Systems, including the use of technology tools like Canvas, are then defined and implemented to support active learning, student-engaged assessment, differentiation, and personalization so that students can take ownership over their own paths to college, career, and lifelong learning. 

Click here to schedule some time to share how you are implementing competency or standards-focused systems with me and my team. We’d love to hear about your successes, needs, pain points, and ideas! I’m planning on collecting best practices and reporting them back in this blog over the next few months. Also, feel free to share what you are doing or what you've learned in the comments below!

Some information on how to use Learning Outcomes in Canvas: 

• The first step is to define and then create, add, or import Outcomes into your Account or Course.
• Next, align Outcomes to Assignments or Quizzes, including through rubrics.
• Once students complete work from their course, results are displayed in the Learning Mastery Gradebook and Outcome Analysis report that shows student performance on Outcomes.
• If you’d like to make a rating scale consistent, you can use the Account and Course Level Mastery Scale feature. 

Other Canvas features such as Mastery Paths, or Instructure products like Mastery Connect, Portfolium, and more may be helpful as you define your CBE systems.