 Hopefully we are doing better than this with our students... Hopefully we are not feeling this ourselves... Warm-up: What skills, attitudes, and knowledge do students need in order to thrive in today's rapidly changing world? What skills, attitudes, and knowledge do students graduate with from The Koç School? Working with the understanding that every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results that it does, what gets in the way of us helping students to master what they need to in order to thrive? A thought to ponder: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” -Alvin Toffler Today's Focus: How might incorporating competency-based learning assist us in what we set out to do at The Koç School? Our Purpose: Why We Exist To cultivate a culture of flourishing amidst the complexity of an interdependent world. Our Vision: Who We Are The Koç School is a community of life-long Learners with a global perspective – guided by reason and conscience, grounded in well-being. Our Mission: What We Do The Koç School guides students to become ethical individuals and leaders capable of building a better world. Exercise: (10 minutes) -Complete the Competencies Self Assessment -Have a Peak at the Student Directed Learning Contract -Extra Credit: Create 1-3 SMART Goals based on your self assessment. Take a strength further or set out to improve on a weakness. SMART Goals are Specific, Measurable, Agreed Upon, Realistic, and Timely. Competency-Based Learning: What is a competency-based education? What are employers saying? Employers are consistently communicating with universities about what job applicants are lacking. The deficiencies that keep coming up are: communication, listening, critical thinking, problem solving, and leadership. These are often being referred to as “soft skills,” and they are rarely taught explicitly, and when they are, they are often isolated to the point of meaninglessness. Since there is such a chronic shortage of these "skills", perhaps we should be calling them something else and finding more impactful ways of teaching them. More positively stated, here is an article that highlights "skills citizens will need in the future world of work." You will notice some overlap. What are universities and companies doing to address this? Competencies are currently being used by many employers in their hiring process. They are also being used to assess job performance. There is debate as to whether these are things that should be learned on the job or if they should be learned at university. Universities have begun to look at the experiences they give their students and have started reaching out to outside credentialing services for help. Some universities now suggest that their students look for opportunities to micro-credential, while others offer opportunities to attain competency badges. In some cases, course are being changed in order to incorporate these needed competencies. Dare we dream bigger? This is just in order to be successful at the workplace. Dare we dream bigger? Thriving, purpose, belonging, self-actualization? If you are interested in a reimagining of Maslow's Hierarchy or Needs expressed more as intersectionality of needs, check out Transcend, by Scott Barry Kaufman. Did you know that Maslow never envisioned a pyramid? This all sounds great, but what about content? Half-Life of Facts Content is important, but we should be mindful of the Half-Life of Facts and its impact upon both us and our students, especially as this moves forward exponentially in many fields and jobs with some entire careers being outsourced to AI. This does not discount the importance of knowledge, it just asks us to be attuned to what is going on in the world around us and to make decisions that are in the best interest of our students’ needs. I operate from the luxury of teaching a course that is not as heavy in content as others. With that said, have a look at what this might look like in a math class, a science class, a history class, and a foreign language class. Evidence and assumptions that I work with in my approach:
 Steps I Take to Make This Work: Embrace the Chaos
Creates Student Opportunities:
What do I like about this? Have a look at some student interviews to see for yourself. -Here is a collection of “End of Semester” Interviews from last year. Please keep in mind that that this is not all sunshine and rainbows.  It takes time. I have been engaged in personalized learning for the past 12 years. This is my fifth year working with competencies. Some of the outcomes I work with are not clearly measurable. There is an essence of the outcome that comes across in a conversation with a student, much as it would in a job interview or a conversation. This is something that I have learned to accept, but it is uncomfortable at times. Staying the course, however, has brought a number of surprises. Sometimes things become clear that would have remained concealed behind a number. Grading. I feel that I am in the business of teaching, not gate keeping. While issues of integrity arise, they also arise with grade-heavy systems. I find that once students get used to this process, they back off the questions about grades. I have also found minimal incidents of plagiarism, which I attribute to the increased personalization and authenticity of their work. It's not entirely students' fault that they badger us about their grades; the system they are trying to navigate demands this. But as you'll see in the interviews, the focus on mastery of outcomes makes grading increasingly meaningless for me. I jump through the proverbial hoop, but I find students have a much richer understanding of themselves within this approach than a grade would ever offer. I find stronger students are willing to engage with their weaknesses, and I find weaker students become more aware of the roots of their shortcomings than a simple inability to master content. I'm interested. How do I get started? Try it. Start Small. Take a few minutes to develop a competency for your own course. You are welcome to work within one of the four I shared with you: communication, growth orientation, citizenship, and thinking. You can also try this with The Koç School's Dispositions. Have a look at what my students are currently working with. But most importantly, think what this might look like for you and your students? And remember, you are not excluding content, you are simply reimagining a container to hold a meaningful chunk of skills, attitudes, and knowledge that you would like your students to master. Definitions: Tomato, To-mah-to...Should we call the whole thing off? The definitions can get a bit messy at times, especially when we try to draw clear distinctions between skills and knowledge and attitudes/dispositions. It can also be complicated when we try to give step-by-step instructions on how to do something such as collaborate or empathize with others. Going Further and Discussion.
Further Exploration: There are a number of resources available online, but have a look at the work that the Aurora Institute provides. You might also want to have a look at GOA, and Getting Smart. And if you want to see it in a transcript, have a look at Mastery Transcript Consortium. Basically, though, this approach is a leap of faith in what your students are capable of, and I've learned a great deal from them once I made it. Whether you like this approach or not, let’s just make sure we don’t push our students down this path...a little fun at my discipline's expense.  Resources:
-Noble Works -https://archive.org/details/farside https://tr.pinterest.com/pin/445363850634377405/
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