Competency-Based Education & Assessment: Getting Started

All right.

We’re going to go ahead and get started here. I’m sure there’s going to be more people coming in. But you guys are the beginning group. So thanks for being early here.

Thanks for being here ReAction. We hope that your experience yesterday was as fabulous as we experienced it. We’ve loved this conference and the presentations that have followed.

Today we’ve got a really great presentation. We’re very excited. We have here Peg Rauschenberger and also Ann Van Eerden.

And they’re going to be presenting on competency-based education and assessment and then getting started. So thanks for both of them being here.

Just a couple of house–

oh, and I just wanted to announce as well that they are from Alverno College.

Just a couple of housekeeping items here. You’ve got your chat button right next to just right on the left side.

You use that for any sort of collaboration or asking questions to colleagues that might be in the chat box. Make sure that you have everyone as the selected participants that you want to be speaking to.

And then there’s also–

you see like a raised hand and also a Q&A box. Use the Q&A box for our roundtable. That’s going to be happening directly after this presentation, where Peg and also Ann will be answering any questions. And we’ll be having a discussion on the presentation.

So use the Q&A box for that. And, again, on the very right, you have that live transcript CC button if you have any trouble hearing what the presentation at all. So with that, I just want to turn the time over to Peg and Ann.

Thank you. Thank you very much, David.

Ann and I are really excited to talk to you today about something that is near and dear to our hearts, competency-based education. And you might be saying, why are these two coming to talk to us?

Alverno College has been doing a competency-based, ability-based–

we have several names for it–

education since the 1970s.

Now, we have gone all the way to the nth degree with that. In that, we are an ungraded system. And competency-based measurements are how we measure student achievement. So we have a little bit of background about competency-based education.

Now, we only have a half hour today. So, of course, this is something that we could spend weeks, weeks talking about.

So we’ll ask David to just yank the chain if we go on too long. But it’s something that we’re very excited about and we love to share about.

So, again, Alverno started in the 1970s doing competency-based education.

And so we’re here today because one of the impetus for this is the changes in the CCNE Essentials, AACN Essentials.

And by 2024, we do have some time. All of the nursing programs that are accredited by CCNE will need to be competency-based and using those essentials.

So we’re here to give you a little snapshot of how to do that. And that’s why we label this getting started because this is just a getting started, right, Ann? Next slide.

Again, this is just–

we have no reported conflicts of interest. And even though I have presented at AACN, we are not representing AACN. Next slide.

So what do we want to accomplish in the half hour and then the time that we have for some discussion with you is we want to talk about the components of an explicitly stated learning outcome. It’s those outcomes that are going to point you in the right direction for making competency-based education happen. And then perhaps we’ll talk about some strategies for creating the learning experiences that are experiential, expand your thinking on what we can do to provide learning for students, and then examine some of the principles for creating those competency-based performance assessments.

We’re going to say several times in this presentation that nursing education long has been a performance assessments when we talk especially about psychomotor skills.

But we’re hoping to spark your thinking a bit about competency-based performance assessments for things such as decision-making and clinical judgment, which are a little more complex.

So can we accomplish this in a half an hour? Hope so. Next slide.

So let’s begin by talking about the benefits of a competency-based approach. They’re very clear. First and foremost, they’re learner-centered.

This seems obvious. But I want to stress here that they’re learner-centered, not teacher-centered.

The quality of learning is improved using CBE.

It expands access for nontraditional students, improves workforce readiness. And this is especially important in the nursing profession.

There’s clarity around the competencies, which means that everybody, especially students, is aware of what they need to do, what they need to demonstrate. They know what the goal is from the very beginning. Competency-based education connects with student-centered missions as well as connecting with program and course outcomes.

Competencies are not fixed entities they change over time and in different contexts. And lastly and very importantly, all students benefited equally from engagement in competency-based education. Next slide please.

So this image illustrates the process of how to connect student learning outcomes to teaching assessment and curriculum. We use the outcomes to teach and assess. We first identify program–

I’m sorry, first identify institutional and program outcomes and then create course outcomes, which you may already have.

Remember that as we begin to talk about the competencies and subcompetencies of the essentials, they’re not a checklist. You’ll incorporate them into your unique curriculum and existing outcomes.

We plan teaching and learning strategies that will provide multiple opportunities for students to practice. And we provide feedback to the students.

Then we design formative and summative performance assessments that include public criteria.

We also design course and program evaluation strategies that include data from these assessments. So this is connecting the student learning outcomes to teaching assessment and curriculum. Next slide Please.

Well, the first question we always have is, where do we start? And how do we start? Sometimes this task seems humongous. And so we start–

the three steps that Ann talked about is how we start.

And if you think about the timeline for CCNE, if you are a CCNE accredited institution, they’re not looking to have all of this integrated until 2024. So we do have some time. We do have some time. But we need to start. So next slide.

The first step, step number one, is maybe the most boring–

maybe boring isn’t the word–

but the tedious–

the most tedious thing to do is to set up a crosswalk of curricular mapping for your curriculum. What I have here on this slide was taken from AACN Connect. If you look on there, there’s all sorts of things that different schools have shared.

And this is the crosswalk with the new essentials, with the domains, the competencies, the subcompetencies. This one shows the pre-licensure undergraduate subcompetencies.

But if you’ve really been looking at it, you know that the domains and competencies are for undergrad, grad, and DNP. So you need to set up a mapping system.

So this one takes a look at–

you have the people who are teaching your courses and the outcomes for each of those courses. And you see where they fit in the crosswalk. Not every course has to hit every domain, every competence, every subcompetence.

As Ann said earlier, this is not a checklist for a student that you check off.

And so many of these competencies and subcompetencies–

how many times I’m going to say that word this morning–

are integrated together.

So you can’t do one without the other. But you go through and you take a look at in your curriculum where they show up in your courses and in your course outcomes.

Now, for instance, if you’re looking at a graduate program, you may need a map that also includes the NONPF competencies for the undergrad, pre-licensure. You may want to include the NCLEX blueprint. So this could become a fairly large document.

But it gives you a picture of what is happening within your curriculum, where it fits with all of these requirements.

But the goal is to map it so that you can make some decisions about where there are gaps. This is where you start doing your gap analysis. Next slide.

And so once you identify those gaps, you can create both learning and assessment strategies and experiences to fill out so that you’re making sure you can demonstrate you’re meeting all the essentials, all the requirements from your accrediting bodies, whatever it might be. It’s also great for new faculty to come in and take a look at your curriculum map and see what they’re doing fits into the overall picture, what the overall goals are.

And so it gives everyone a sense of the big picture. I’m one of those, I need to see the big picture to figure out where my piece fits.

But performance assessment now is going to be key.

So that means experiential learning and performance assessment are the next steps, as Ann laid out in her three-step process. Next slide.

So now you finished your mapping. And this is where Peg and I want to stress over and over again, no program needs to start from scratch. You’ve identified gaps. Just keep going.

Your existing outcomes might need some minor tweaks. And sometimes you may have things to review.

But the next two slides here–

or, I’m sorry, the next slide are a couple of examples–

in our next slides, there are a couple of examples of our program outcomes that didn’t need revising.

We just had to identify what competencies were already embedded in them. So next slide please.

So here we are.

We’re using an existing program outcome.

And we are making the connection. We’re looking at what essentials are embedded and then what competencies.

So a quick review–

a learning outcome or an outcome describes the overall purpose or goal from participation in an educational activity. Courses should be planned with a measurable learning outcome in mind. And, again, this is because we want these outcomes to be public.

So, next, you have to ask yourself a few questions. How do or how can the essential competencies align with what is already existing?

There may be questions we need to ask before that, such as, to what extent do you, other faculty, and your students articulate and use your existing outcomes? Are they just written for creditors but don’t inform your teaching practices to the extent they could or should?

And why is this important? Because outcomes should be used by students and others to identify goals.

I always review course outcomes and unit outcomes with my students. I tell them that it’s really hard to work toward a goal if you don’t know what that goal is.

So in this example here, our program outcome is apply leadership concepts and skills grounded in professional standards to support innovation and adaptation in evolving health care systems.

Having said that, looking for the alignment, it looks like that aligns with Domain 10–

Personal, Professional, and Leadership Development and also Domain 7–

Systems-Based Practice.

Going further and looking at the competencies, it looks like that aligns with 10.3–

Developed Capacity for Leadership and 7.1–

Apply Knowledge of Systems to Work Effectively Across the Curriculum–

of the Continuum of Care. Next slide please.

So here is another example of the same process but at a graduate level. So you can see that our existing program outcome to skillfully engage in collaborative and transdisciplinary leadership to reconstruct or construct strategies for innovative and transformative change in complex health care settings aligns with the essentials Domain 10, again–

Personal, Professional, and Leadership Development and Domain 7–

Systems-Based Practice.

The graduate competencies that are aligned with this then are 10.3–

Developed Capacity for Leadership and 7.3–

Optimize System Effectiveness Through Application of Innovation and Evidence-Based Practice. Next slide please.

Continuing to talk about outcomes, what are the characteristics of learner-centered–

remember, learner-centered, not teacher-centered–

behavioral outcomes?

Again, outcomes are written statements that reflect what the learner will be able to do as a result of participating in an educational activity. They address the educational needs, meaning knowledge, skills, and/or practice, that contribute to the professional practice gap. And achieving the learning outcomes results in narrowing or closing that gap.

So what are the characteristics of good outcomes?

They involve the whole person.

They are teachable. They can be assessed. They’re behavioral and measurable. They transfer across settings. And they are continually evaluated and redefined. Next slide please.

So let’s take this a step further by actually creating a learning strategy to address a competency. We have to create course outcomes and assess them. So here we have an example of a unit outcome created by integrating a program outcome with the competency.

This learning experience can be used to provide input or to demonstrate the student’s effectiveness at subcompetency 5.2C–

Examine Basic Safety Design Principles to Reduce Risk of Harm.

Most of us are already covering these types of concepts within the domains and competencies. We just need to be get be explicit in our outcomes so that they are reflected.

And if we can’t find them, that was part of our gap analysis. You’ve identified where the gaps already are.

In this case, the outcome is listed here. The integrated outcome effectively applies the nursing process to identify and address issues affecting the safety of an individual patient.

And an idea for a learning strategy might be to observe in an apartment, document, and self-assess. Next slide please.

So once you have your behavioral, measurable outcomes, teaching and learning outcomes, you move on then to creating those learning experiences. And those need to be experiential. So next slide.

Here we have come up with a whole list of things that we can do in the classroom as teaching, learning strategies that apply cognitive, affective, and psycho motor skills on the part of the learner. Now, this does not negate. I think sometimes when we talk to people, we are so immersed at Alverno in experiential learning that people think we don’t ever do presentations or what are sometimes commonly called lectures.

Of course, we do present materials to our students.

But the whole goal is that they do something with what they know and not just know something.

And sometimes when it’s strictly lecture and exam, all you’re getting is what they can report back about what they’re thinking. We want them to do things.

So within the classroom–

even at Alverno, our classrooms are set up very different. In that, students sit in small groups and things.

I’m not going to read each one of these to you. But there’s a lot of role-playing or debates, where we even force them to take a side that maybe they don’t agree with. But then they have to really examine the viewpoint of the opposite side of an argument and then debate it.

And some of this, you might look at and say, in nursing education, you’re going to produce artwork or write a poem?

Yes. Yes, because we have found our students are having affective responses to the experiences they’re having with their patients or in their clinicals or with coming to grips with their own feelings about things, such as end of life issues, that kind of thing. And sometimes using the artistic side to express how they’re processing that is a great way for them to work through their feelings and affective responses–

creating audio visuals, creating teaching kinds of materials, practice teaching.

We have sometimes the class pretend they’re an audience of, say, second graders. And then the student has to teach them how to brush their teeth or something. And then the rest of the class responds as if they were that audience to give them some practice before they get out there into clinical settings.

And, again, the onset of simulation–

I’m an old, old nurse. Simulation was we practiced on each other. But now with all the high and low fidelity simulation, we can give our students some real hands-on practice that isn’t just an intellectual exercise.

So it takes a little bit of work to incorporate these things into your classroom practice.

But it actually gives them the chance to work through problems in a way that is very, very close to the setting that they’ll be in when they actually do practice.

So I encourage you, if you ever want to talk, we can talk at length about how we use all of these in the classroom to get our students ready for the real setting. Next slide.

So we talk about this as active learning, not passive learning, where there’s simply–

and sometimes it’s very difficult to get students to buy into this. Just tell me what I need to know, and tell me what’s going to be on the exam, that kind of thing.

But once they really start into the active learning, they come back to us and say that they have a greater feeling of self-efficacy, that they have more confidence in what they’re doing because we have had them doing things with what they know all along and not just when they get into the clinical setting. So active learning involves making that action out of knowledge. And so they do more with it than just knowing facts. They have to reflect and analyze and interact and create–

much more active.

But you have to give them very clear–

this goes back to what Ann was talking about with the outcomes–

very clear information about what is expected of them. How can you work towards something if you don’t know what the goal is, as Ann said. So clear information about what is to be learned and then some guidance–

how to use that information to achieve competence.

And so, of course, this requires regular assessment of their progress towards mastery. So they are getting formative and summative assessment of their progress.

You need to give them frequent feedback on what they’re doing well and what areas need development. And we’ll talk a little bit more about feedback in a minute.

And the key–

the real key is that students learn how to assess their own performance. Because when you get out into practice, there isn’t someone standing next to you all the time, saying, this is what you need to do better. This is what you’re really pretty good at right now. They need to be good at assessing that for themselves.

And so sometimes we have self-assessments attached to almost everything we do at Alverno.

And sometimes students, their eyes just roll back in their head, like, oh, well, I thought I was done, now I have to self-assess my work.

And we’ll talk about how to elicit in-depth self-assessment in a minute. So they have to get good at assessing their own performance. Next slide.

Well, then, then assess.

We need to assess learning. And that is beyond just the exams, although, absolutely, students have to get good at taking exams. They’re going to have to take the NCLEX. So it demands that we teach them how to assess their learning on exam questions.

The new generation of NCLEX is going to take that even to the next step. But that’s a whole other webinar.

Someday.

But they need to be able to demonstrate their knowledge and their abilities in real life kinds of situations. So how do we set that up? Next slide.

Assessment–

we talk about this at Alverno. And sometimes it takes a little while for both faculty and students to understand that assessment of learning is–

there’s assessment of learning. There’s assessment that is used for learning. And then there is assessment as learning.

So assessment of learning is a standard-based measurement of progression. We take a look at a student’s performance based on the standards or the guidelines for whatever it is they’re demonstrating. And then we give them feedback on whether they’re on target or not. So that’s assessment of.

But assessment for learning means that it’s a diagnostic. You use the assessment as a diagnostic measurement to provide some feedback to the learner and feedback to you as faculty as to how students are doing. So it takes you in that next step for learning.

And then assessment as learning–

we want to get away from just taking that grade or that C or the you passed that project and then moving on. We want people to think deeper about it and take a look at the assessment that happened and do some metacognitive processing, some self-assessment, where you take what you learned, what your faculty is telling you, the feedback that you’re getting, and then monitoring your own process and movement towards the goals, those outcomes that were set, the first thing Ann talked about, so that students are doing their own self-reflection and they’re learning from their performance.

What did I do well? What did I do not so well?

So assessment of learning, assessment for learning, and assessment as learning. Next slide.

So as we are discussing this transition from a content-based framework to a competency-based framework, I’d like to share this comparison with you, the two general frameworks in relation to assessment.

As you can see, in the content framework, we assess to give a grade.

In a competency-based framework, we don’t use grades. We assign progress codes. And so you can–

I want you to take a second to read through here because I think this is really helpful in looking and comparing the two types of frameworks that we are talking about here.

You can see that we use formative assessments regularly to help students gauge their learning and identify strengths and gaps in their understanding. As Peg had said, faculty can use assessments to inform their classroom practices and pedagogy in real time to identify parts of lessons that didn’t quite work out for a given set of students and to adjust the curriculum and/or pedagogy to improve student learning and to advance their students. As you’re hearing today, performance-based assessments in a competency framework go beyond assessing discrete packets of knowledge to evaluate knowledge in practice through integrated work products judged against clearly communicated criteria–

we can’t stress that enough–

in order to assess what a student can actually do with their learning.

We have students create things like exhibits, presentations, portfolios, engage in debates, role-playing, and simulations, just as Peg had said. And these kinds of assessments can occur at all levels–

across all levels of a nursing curriculum. Next slide please.

So here’s where we’re going to get into an assessment design and competency-based education. So when you’re designing a performance assessment for a course, we would begin by asking, how do you take those outcomes and turn them into something concrete and observable that the students could be expected to do? To do this, you can create learning and assessment experiences and develop criteria, all of which are explicitly linked to those student learning outcomes.

A performance-based assessment is an example of student assessment as learning, which is what Peg was just differentiating a couple slides ago. It is a multidimensional process that’s integral to learning and involves observing performances of an individual learner in action and judging them on the basis of public developmental criteria–

again, the criteria is public–

with resulting feedback to the learning. So It serves to confirm student achievement and provide feedback to the student for the improvement of learning and to the instructor for the improvement of teaching.

So where to start?

First, identify the assessment, context, or situation.

Consider having a conference with the patient’s family about palliative care, safely using appropriate solutions to reconstitute a medication, observing children to identify developmental milestones, videotaping a group interaction, discussing a quality improvement project. So these are all contexts or situations that could be used as part of assessment design.

Next, you have to identify a mode for student response.

Will it be written? Will it be oral? Will it be visual? What do you want students to do or produce as a part of this assessment?

Examples include something as basic or traditional as writing your research report. But it also could be making an oral presentation, writing a script, doing a role play in front of the class, creating a poster, writing a self-assessment and peer assessments of others’ effectiveness in accomplishing a group project, creating a movie that captures elements of a specific SBAR, creating a written community health teaching plan, or orally discussing the rationale.

And then, finally, once you’ve identified A and B, you would create the assessment prompt and instructions. Next slide please.

As you design this assessment, questions to keep in mind are, how close is the assessment to what the students will actually do when they complete the program?

Is the assessment clearly related to the outcomes and competencies?

Does the assessment fit the level of the student?

Does the assessment elicit the most advanced performance of which each student is capable? And does it include directions that are distinguished from the criteria? Next slide please.

So let’s talk a little bit about criteria.

When we have broad learning outcomes aligned with the competencies and subcompetencies, the next step in moving toward assessment is to break open these outcomes into explicit–

again, explicit, clear criteria.

These criteria need to be specific enough for students to understand and use while being flexible enough to allow students to meet the criteria in unique and individual ways. And this is really important that the criteria can be met in unique and individual ways.

A founder of Alverno’s curriculum, Sister Georgine Loacker used to talk about fuzzy criteria. The criteria must be formed enough for students to be able to picture what a successful performance would look like while being fuzzy enough or flexible enough for different students to meet the criteria in their individual ways.

One word of caution here is that criteria are not the same as directions. If a student can meet all of your criteria and still not sufficiently demonstrate competencies or outcomes, then the criteria need to be examined and revised. Next slide, please.

OK. So for your convenience and for maybe some guidance, I have included here–

Peg and I have included some examples of assessment outcomes. Not only have we provided these examples, but we’ve also integrated the domains, compentencies, and subcompetencies for each of the assessment outcomes.

Next slide, please.

So a few questions to ask about the criteria.

Are they more specific than the outcome?

Are they something that you could observe?

Could a student meet these criteria in a variety of ways?

Could a student self-assess based on these criteria?

And will it give the student an opportunity to demonstrate sufficient indicators of the outcome? Next slide, please.

So self-assessment–

the advantage of clear performance criteria and descriptive rubrics is that students should be able to use these tools to guide their learning and to reflect on their work. This reflection or this metacognitive process that Peg talked about earlier whereby students observe, analyze, and judge their performance on the basis of criteria and use what they learn to deepen their understanding and set goals for further improvement is what we call self-assessment.

Just as feedback is critical to teaching, self-assessment is critical to deep and lasting learning.

Therefore good assessment often includes a plan of self-assessment. This can come before, during, or after an assessment or even, maybe importantly, some actively at the end of a course or integrated learning experience. Next slide, please.

So here are some self-assessment prompts. Many of us have teaching projects as part of our curriculum. And so these are prompts that you might use as part of self-assessment for a teaching project assessment.

I want to just add here that in relation to the criteria, we always have students self-assess and provide evidence of how they met the criteria for any given assessment. And that is in addition to these self-assessment prompts. Next slide, please.

So giving feedback in a competency-based approach is really important. It’s an essential component of students’ growth and development. It tells them how well they are doing from a perspective outside of themselves. It raises questions that enable them to critique and further develop their ideas.

We consider feedback essential for students’ improvement of their thinking and learning by reinforcing students’ understanding of what they know and can do. It can motivate them to change and replace vague hope with realistic goal-setting.

Please keep in mind that in competency-based education, feedback is teaching it’s individualized teaching. And it is critical to the process. Next slide, please.

So some principles of feedback to focus on–

while there are many types and purposes of feedback, feedback can be formative. It lets the student know how they’re doing in relation to standards or criteria. Or it can be summative to provide a final evaluative judgment on a particular performance in assessment for a course.

It can also be summative in the form of a competence or to allocate a grade.

OK. In planning for feedback, think about how students will receive the feedback.

Will it be from you as an instructor or faculty? Will it be from someone else, such as a peer?

Will it be orally? Will it be in writing? Will it be individually? Or will it be in groups?

Given the level of the students involved? How will you ensure that the feedback is meaningful to them, that they can relate to it in the development of their ability?

And while we haven’t talked about it today, when we’ve talked about the essentials and the competencies and subcompentencies before, we talk about how they’re scaffolded throughout the curriculum. And feedback must be appropriate based on the level of the students.

So let’s look at some principles of feedback here. The first one, behavior in relation to–

can go back, please–

behavior in relation to criteria–

that public description of the standard that is expected, whether it be criteria or rubric. And your feedback directly provides behavioral description of how the criteria were met or not met.

Use of criteria focused on behavior can take away the perception that you are critiquing the person, which brings into the second point, observation rather than inferences.

When providing feedback, what did you see? What did you hear? Providing this information gives the student receiving this information the opportunity to form their own inferences.

The third point relates to the previous two–

description rather than judgment. Report what you saw, heard in as objective a manner as possible. Judgments entail subjective evaluation–

good, bad, positive, negative that is based on a personal frame of reference and values.

Behavior related to a specific situation–

what is happening right now? The next two go together very well. What amount of information would serve the needs of the recipient versus the amount of information that I have?

I know that when I first began giving feedback, I would go on and on. Students would tell me that it was too much and they were overwhelmed. And it was hard for them to take an even one little morsel of what I was providing.

So I try to focus more on the criteria and a summation that suggests the last point. Share feed forward rather than advice. In other words, point the students to the next steps that they need to be successful.

In summarizing all of this, all of the principles of feedback, again, I want to stress what I stressed on the last slide. Feedback is teaching. And it is individualized teaching.

And it’s so helpful for the students. Next slide, please.

So here are students’ thoughts on feedback. I’ve included this direct quote from one of our students who said, I think it’s helpful, because it’s individualized as you get your strengths and weaknesses. Also, it unmasks the goals of what you’re doing instead of just, splat, a letter grade. And you get some kind of explanation, some kind of idea of what you’re supposed to be doing and what you’re doing really well. Next slide, please.

So that’s a whole lot in a short amount of time. But one of the tasks we have as we make this shift to CBE, or Competency-Based based Education, and assessment, how do we get everybody on board to commit? It sounds like it’s huge.

But if you really take a look at your curriculum and all the things that are happening in all your courses, I think it is less daunting than it sounds. You are already doing much of this.

But we, as a corporate faculty at each of our institutions, need to come together and have conversations about this. And that is part of the reason why CCNE has given people until 2024 to implement the new essentials.

Even if you’re not a CCNE accredited, you still might want to work toward having students actually perform and show that they can do something with what they know. So what does it take?

You need to encourage a lot of dialogue and debate. There will be emotional responses.

Because faculty will see that this does take a significant amount of work to create, especially, the learning experiences and the assessments.

But once you do, there is a huge return on investment. And that’s what you need to explore together as a corporate faculty.

You will have clear data that will demonstrate how well your students are meeting your overall program outcomes.

This data is so much more in depth than just exam scores.

But faculty also need to be involved in creating the processes and products. You can’t just say this is what we’re doing and go do it.

You need to create the time–

and that’s the next to last bullet point–

create the time to do the work. Even though Alverno has been doing a competency-based education since the ’70s, we are now taking a look specifically at the new essentials to make sure the competencies and subcompentencies are embedded in our curriculum.

So as leaders–

Ann and I and the dean have created days–

and it’s not just an hour here and there. We have whole mornings plotted out for doing this work together. So you have to–

faculty are overworked.

Our faculty work hard.

So we need to create the time to do the work. And we need to keep checking in with each other for continued support. And as leaders, we need to be very clear about the desired outcomes.

This goes back to the outcomes that Ann talked about for the students. We need outcomes for ourselves. What are we trying to accomplish doing this? And I’m not going to get into it. But there will also be work you need to do to get students on board.

Again, they need to see the value of the amount of work they’re going to have to do to demonstrate their learning. Once they do, and then they can feel more confident in the clinical arena, It’s usually a good thing. But we have a lot of work to get all of us to commit to competency-based education.

So we went a little longer than our time. But that’s a quick overview at getting started.

Awesome. Thank you so much, both Ann and Peg. That was really great.

We have a couple of questions that we wanted to transition into. And one, Patrick Luna, we’d like to invite him up to the stage to ask his question to you. So if we could get Patrick.

PATRICK LUNA: Can you all hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

PATRICK LUNA: All right. First of all, just excellent information.

You actually made me want to buy a plane ticket and just sit in on one of your classrooms and see all the wonderful work that you’re doing. It’s really refreshing to see a different approach to nursing education–

really, really excellent.

I look forward to hearing more about what you all do at your college.

I did have one question or a couple of questions.

My first was, did you align all your program outcomes to the new essentials? And did that lead to a revision of your program outcomes or a revision of individual courses? I know that can be a lot of work.

Sort of all of the above. We’re in process at the moment of really going line by line through the competencies and subcompetencies. I think–

and, Ann, you can chime in–

I think what we will end up doing is not–

I think our program outcomes are OK.

But I think sometimes they’re a little global or include too much. Maybe the course outcomes are too much. And we might have to break it out a little bit. So it’s a little bit clearer.

But we were surprised–

and I’ve been consulting with some other universities. We’re surprised at how well what already exist fits.

You just have to take the time and see and plot it out on that mapping. But I don’t think it’s going to be as much work as you think it will be.

Well, what’s interesting–

just a couple of follow-ups–

is that we have provided our faculty with–

we’ve allocated time for them to work on this, the gap analysis. But we’ve done it together. We’ve all convened on campus and work together, which is fun, just because we haven’t had a lot of time to do that.

But one thing that’s coming out of that is it’s really energizing faculty as they start to go through the competencies and look at the subcompetencies within their course. They’re generating new ideas for new assessments, new ways to assess students, new teaching strategies.

So it’s had a very positive, unintended consequence. The other thing I wanted to just follow up with is that I think when we get through the process–

and maybe, Peg, I’m talking a little bit ahead of where we’re at–

but I think we’d like to go back and make sure that our outcomes, while they might meet the competencies that we change and use the language of the competencies a little bit more such as switching from patient-centered type things to person-centered–

so that’s something that we would see down the road, but we might want to do.

PATRICK LUNA: Yeah.

That’s great. And I know there’s a lot of different terms and things that we’re all going to have to–

and they’ve included that glossary of terms that makes our language universal. I found that very helpful.

One other question.

This was in response to something that you said, Dr. Rauschenbergre, that I found interesting.

In your opinion, is critical thinking an intellectual exercise? Should we evolve beyond this concept with competency-based education?

Well, yes.

Critical thinking, people define that in a whole lot of different ways.

And I do still use the term sometimes. But I think we need to break it out into things like clinical judgment and goal-setting and problem-solving and those–

Analysis.

–analysis and to what the components of critical thinking really are. Because then it’s easier. Oh, you didn’t analyze it correctly. So that’s why you came to the wrong solution.

So let’s look at the analysis piece.

And so I guess trying to get students to see that as each one of those is a skill they need to learn–

analysis, problem-solving–

we have eight abilities at Alverno that we ask the student–

that when you put them together, it comprises critical thinking.

PATRICK LUNA: Got it. And I think that’s what I meant–

just evolving beyond that concept. Because it’s something that we do use for a lot of different explanations and even in rubrics and things like that.

One last thing while I got y’all here. I found that so enlightening what you are all talking about.

The toolkits have a lot of validated tools. There besides the professional development it’s going to take to learn these tools, especially the ones that the AACN are specifically recommending, do you all have any experience with validated tools in competency-based education?

Well, yes.

But Alverno has published a lot since 1970 about learning that lasts is what we talk about it.

And there is a book called Learning That Lasts that talks about the longitudinal studies we have done about strategies we’ve used in order to not just–

they don’t want to just pass a test. You want that learning that lasts.

So you may want to take a look at that book. Some of it’s a little–

but we do have some tools that we’ve used over time to measure success with competency-based–

we call it ability-based education.

PATRICK LUNA: It is now on my Amazon list here. So [INAUDIBLE]

have to check it out. Thank you so much, and thanks for your time in answering my questions.

Thank you so much, Patrick, for that audience participation there. We’re running or running to the close of our presentation sadly. We wish that we could always have so much more discussion and questions. And I wish we could have all day. I’m sure you both could go all day.

The book–

I just want to answer the last question– Learning That Lasts.

Learning That Lasts. OK. Was it Learning That Lasts?

I’m pretty sure it’s in the reference section of our slides.

Right. It’s from Jossey-Bass.

Right. Did I spell it right? OK, perfect.

Awesome. Thank you so much again, Peg and Ann. There was a question specifically about GoReact. We are going to be transitioning into our next presentation that we’ll talk about nursing education with GoReact.

So be sure to attend that. And we’ll get some more discussion based off of that. But thank you. Thank you again.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

Have a great day. Thank you.

Bye, bye.

Bye.