The Other 85 Percent

How to best package higher education

October 12, 2009 | Filed under: Capella, Capella University, Inside Higher Ed, Mike Offerman, The Other 85 Percent, college, college degree, online education, online learning, online university

Inside Higher Ed details how “skill training” is delivered at Kellogg Community College in Michigan.  This is a story of breaking up the standard way that postsecondary education is packaged.  That is, taking the standard 3-credit course and breaking it into its parts, taking concepts or competencies one at a time, instead of packing them together.  What the folks in the College’s Regional Manufacturing Technology Center have done is to offer modules of one concept or competency or skill rather than embedding these in a larger course or even larger credential.  And they have really set an accountability standard in that they get paid only if they can prove that the student is proficient in the skill they were trained on.

Now I realize that what is described is skills training. Nonetheless, I think this approach is very interesting and something that could be considered in higher education. Certainly at the undergraduate level and, perhaps, at the master’s degree level.  I know that at Capella University, we have created curriculum maps for all bachelor’s and master’s degrees.  We know where and when in the curriculum selected competencies are delivered.  And, we could isolate and deliver those more granular chunks of learning separately rather than bundled in a 3 or 4 or whatever-credit course.  And we have developed assessments for these smaller learning units.  But, we like most of the rest of higher education, stick to packaging these in the more standard course and only offer them in that package.

I have long wondered why we don’t do something along the lines of what Kellogg is doing. While I find it a bit odd that Kellogg offers .25 credit, I suspect that is so that a learner might come in with a collection of these partial credits and want them packaged into a certification of some kind.  And that makes good sense.  It seems to me that adult learners, in particular, might want to learn only part of what we now package into a 3-credit course.  They may want to test out of part of a course and take the remainder.  Employers, as cited in the article, might benefit from sending employees to get just that learning that is needed quickly, and not have to buy a whole certificate or degree to get the desired learning.

In my opinion, making the curriculum more granular is technically possible today.  It would require lots of oversight to differentiate or customize learning by individual need, but that has long been seen as a promise that technology might deliver.

The article cites some of the risks or downsides of this type of approach.  Those include being “frustratingly open-ended” so that the student could be overwhelmed, assumptions that cohort learning is superior, and the infrastructure and management this type of approach demands.  I would add that the idea of assessing and proving proficiency for learning each module is a big, but important, step.

What I really wonder is if anyone would be interested in this type of more granular, but flexible, approach to learning?  I would like to hear what you think. Please feel free to leave a comment.

Mike

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