 Good morning, everyone, and thanks to my co-convenors, AACC, WGU, and New Mecca Foundation, again, it was a great process pulling things together. When I've written on competency-based education before, and it always strikes me how much in startup mode it actually is, even though it's been around for a long time. And I think that the systems and policy implications are still very fresh and still very new along many dimensions. I was really excited in thinking about the actual practice that's going on in the context of community colleges and having a conversation with some really smart folks about, you know, what they're beginning to see as systemic implications both at the community college system level and at the accreditor level and then at the federal-state policy level. I'll just do a quick introduction of the panelists that are up here with me. And then we'll move into our conversation and definitely some time for audience Q&A and interaction with the group. I'll start right here to my immediate right with Jay Box. Jay is the chancellor of the Kentucky Community and Technical College system. He has, he serves as the president in the Kentucky, in the KCTCS system for almost a decade and then before that in senior leadership roles in community colleges in Texas. Then there's Bel Bielan, who is the president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and has had over 30 years of experience in higher education leadership and in just about every different role faculty member, student services, campus provost, college president, and I believe also an education secretary role. And Amy Layton, deputy director here at New America Foundation of the education program and who prior to this served in the Obama administration as the Department of Education and I believe also on the DPC or no, the White House. And one of the things, I'll just start with Jay, Jay, when your Kentucky is noted as being a leader, a leading state at the systems level, when you see competency-based education and how it's playing out in your system, what are your initial thoughts, what do you think you are, what are the questions that still arise for you and your team in your colleges? Thank you, Lewis. Of course, KCTCS came to this conclusion on developing a competency-based education delivery mode because we believed in our community college mission of providing access to students and we found through some surveys that we still weren't reaching the working adult and most of you that are in community college education know that the working adult is one of the hardest populations to reach. Not only is it difficult for us to find times to schedule classes for them, but it's also difficult for them to persist all the way through a semester due to life issues. And so when we developed our learn-on-demand competency-based model, we addressed it differently in that we said we're going to take all of our 16-week courses and chunk them down into modules that are three to four weeks in length. The purpose of that is that those working adults then could choose to start and if life issues change their agenda, then they could at least leave us in three weeks with a credit, a partial credit of a course that would then roll up into a full course as they took the other modules. Now, we started this just about five years ago now and we've seen tremendous growth in this delivery mode. It has not seen that our students in this delivery mode have finished credentials quicker, but they have been more successful and we have reached our target audience in that 85% of the students enrolled in this delivery are 25 years of age and older and working adults. So that they are exactly what we were going toward and I think that's one thing is as you determine to go toward a competency-based model that you need to make sure you're understanding what your target audience is because it really isn't for every student and we're trying to make sure that we're staying true to our vision. There's one follow on Jay. So the modular system, it's scaled across the whole system at once, the modular approach. Well, what we did is we have 16 colleges and 74 campuses across Kentucky. We're comprehensive community colleges and we have a memorandum of understanding that our creditor has approved that allows for if one college delivers an online course, then another college can accept that course. Of course, SACs accredits programs, they don't accredit courses, but we deliver an associate of arts and associate of science and we deliver business administration, an IT degree, plus the nursing pathways with a certified nursing assistant, LPN and RN program within this curriculum, plus an integrated engineering technology degree that will be coming on later on in the late spring of 2014. All 16 colleges can have students enrolled in this model. Only eight of our colleges are actually delivering within this model. Great. Thank you. Bill, I want to move on to you next and see if I can frame this big enough so that you can take it on all at once. As I've been listening to the conversation, I hear a lot of experimentation going on along every dimension of what it is to deliver a higher education, faculty roles, new programs within institutions, defining competencies in different ways. I add to that initiatives that are emerging from outside institutions, such as the degree qualifications profile. As an accreditor who is doing the hard work of trying to do quality assurance and peer review when all that experimentation is going on, just your experiences in working with member institutions in your area and the challenges you see in opportunities. Contrary to popular opinion, accreditors are not stifling innovation. If I say nothing else that you write today, please write that. We will be the fourth of the seven regional accreditors who have actually come up with a policy for responding to institutions' desires to have competency-based programs. As was mentioned earlier, this is not new. This has been recycled. This is my 40th year in higher education, and it's kind of like pointy-toe shoes. You wait every 25 years. They come back in style. The difference, I think, is that there is a much greater need for us to get people quickly employed. And so to get them the skill sets that they need and to have someone certify that they indeed have those skill sets is what's driving a lot of this, and that's not what drove it before. So that's a big thing. We are taking, so that Broward feels comfortable, we are taking a policy to our board in December that will put the process in place by which institutions would be able to submit their proposals, and then we would be able to approve them. And we're concerned about things, even though the traditional model is still there, and this is going to have to fit that square peg into the round hole, how they do it is what will make the difference. We don't have a definitive way that faculty, their role has to be defined, or the number of hours they have to teach. And so what we're looking for is an explanation on what will the role of faculty be. How will you determine that you have enough qualified faculty? What is the curriculum? What are the competencies? We've been in front of student learning outcomes since the 80s, so that's not as big a deal. What is as big a deal to our institutions is how do you assess whether students have actually achieved those competencies and what changes have you made in the institution as a result of those results? That's redundant, but because of what you found. So those are the kinds of things that we will be doing. Jay mentioned we don't accredit programs or courses. We accredit institutions, but we approve programs and the locations thereof. And so we have to be sure that whatever this model is that surfaces provides the same quality instruction and the same way of a same set of expectations or at least a comparable set of expectations for the CBE offered courses as regular courses. There's going to still be that need to ensure the accreditors because we then ensure the general public that the oomph of the CBE programs have the same oomph that traditional programs do. That they're going to have to learn the same stuff perhaps through a different modality, but that the quality of that instruction and the quality of that learning is equal to what we already know out there. Great. Thank you. And Amy, just to round out the conversation, put a bunch of the issues on the table and then go a little bit deeper. I believe the first congressional hearing we had a while back on that we think kicked off higher ed reauthorization really focused on the tripartite nature of the way we do regulation and quality in higher ed, looking at the state, federal, and accreditor roles. And you've been thinking about and writing about competency-based debt for a while. Do you see the beginnings of changes in those roles? Do you see perhaps at the federal state level? I know that in previous consulting work that I've done that one of the questions that continues to arise and it surfaced in the first panel is about, for example, federal financial aid and state financial aid in the context of competency-based debt and making sure that you're not running a foul of state regulatory rules or calling down an audit from the Department of Ed based on the way that you're developing programs. Do you see a beginning of that evolution happening or is it not started yet? So I do think there's a beginning of that conversation and actually Iris Palmer from NGA is here today and I know she's been thinking a lot about this and what competency-based education means at the state level and how you sort of marry that at the federal level and clearly financial aid, the funding of higher education is an important one. So at the federal level we have mostly up until recently been paying for time, time-based credit hour rather than learning and now with direct assessment we're starting to move away from that a little bit and then hopefully with the experimental sites that I believe somebody publicly said a few days ago, well there should be a notice out within the next few weeks that invites colleges to apply for these experimental sites. For those of you who aren't familiar with what experimental sites are, they're basically these sort of small, I'm just going to call them innovation labs where institutions can waive or the federal or the department can waive for institutions, some of the financial aid rules and statutes that might be preventing them from sort of doing some of the policy things that we want to do. So there's a lot wrapped up in federal financial aid that's related to time. So there's the credit hour and measuring things by the credit hour. There's also, as people mentioned earlier, academic year. There's satisfactory academic progress. Like what does all of that look like when you take time out of it? And those are questions we don't have the answer to and we need to start experimenting around and that's great and the feds are starting to do that. But then you know institutions aren't just beholden to the sort of federal oversight but also to the state. So when you have states that have very specific start times, they have very specific census dates, you're having to marry those things up and I think it's starting but nobody's figured it out yet. I think it might, you know, there's going to be a process but I do want to take this opportunity to sort of take a step back and sort of say it's great that we are getting into the weeds now about how this would look. We sort of assume that competency-based education is a good thing. How are we going to make it happen? And there's a lot of really, you know, sort of weedy regulations and I mean there's systems, there's policies, there's somebody mentioned earlier the LMS systems that aren't capable of doing competency-based education. There's all of the specific stuff and we need to figure that out and I think that's great that we are starting to move that way. What I worry about and I know this might sound odd since I'm sort of a big proponent of competency-based education, is I worry at the federal level that now we might be moving a little bit too quickly in our excitement. There's so much interest in competency-based education right now that I think we are taking it for granted that we know it works, we know how it works and we're ready to scale it up and I don't I don't think we are. I mean I, so I say this, you know, getting calls from, you know, congressional staffers all the time, what changes could we make to AGA, right? So I think we need, we need to try to figure out some stuff in order to try to make changes to AGA but I don't think we know yet what those changes would be and again I think we need to sort of step the sort of premise of CVE is really that it's outcomes-based and that it's based on learning and that the learning can be proven and demonstrated and unless and until we get that part right all the other stuff doesn't matter. We can figure out how to deliver, you know, a faster cheaper credential but we also need to make sure that it's good quality and that to me is we have to figure out all the other things and this is not me trying to be reactionary saying no no we don't know enough yet. No, we need to know which is why we need to experiment so that's why I'm excited about the experimental sites and possibly this demonstration program that's coming and I hope it allows us to answer both the really specific questions that you sort of ask about how do we, you know, how do you merge these very specific, you know, different operating systems as it were but also really get at the quality question. We've all been present at, Amy as you're merging as the voice of reason on competency-based education. Jay, I want to come back to you in terms of, you know, talking about the way that, you know, eight colleges delivering programs and one of the things that's interesting especially since you've gone modular is in many ways you're creating entirely new learning resources that aren't being developed across the system but within the system and is the system starting to view itself as almost a learning resource repository that will manage and curate those resources across all the campuses or are you already that? Yes, in our learn on demand delivery mode what we did is that the colleges that applied to develop the courses had to put together teams of faculty and usually from multiple colleges that developed the courses just determine what the learning outcomes would be the competencies would be and grouped them accordingly and then they developed them into a template where no matter what faculty member was delivering it it would be delivered the very same way so that the resources that what the student would get would be the very same with just the difference with the the faculty facilitator that would bring their nuances to it but primarily the course would be exactly the same and and as far as textbooks we went with an e-resources process where we worked where we had the faculty members choose the textbook that they would use and then worked with the different publishers to have that publisher put it into an electronic format and chunk that down the textbook down into only the resources that would be necessary for that module in some cases that was quite a bit of material and other times it was less than that but that that material is always available for the student from the very time that they registered for the course and one of the we were chatting earlier and one of the items that you mentioned was as you began to move to this to the the competency-based modular system that there was a lot more cost on the investment on the front end and can you talk about that a little bit more because i think that's really interesting at a system level right you know that's that's where the majority the cost is is is getting everything right up front the development of the coursework and remember we approached this that this was going to be a student audience that was totally virtual we wanted that working adult never to have to come onto our college campuses so if that was the case what infrastructure did we have to put into place so one of the first things we had to do was develop a 24-7 virtual student services model uh several of our college presidents thought they could just hire people uh and i said locking them in the closet at two in the morning was not acceptable and so we decided to outsource that that piece of the tier one services and and went with proscenium learning a kentucky company at the time and now that's been bought out by blackboard student services and it's been very successful for us we we also had to look at what other kinds of support our students would need in a virtual environment and then we established a couple years ago student success coaches and there's there's cost to those additional resources for the students and those are fairly up front and continuing costs but once we got the infrastructure in place our our delivery cost has actually come down and we're able to at least break even on on our delivery now and at that just one further follow-up on the system level do you feel that the way that the system budgets or the way you're allowed to budget under state law that it gives you the flexibility to do that kind of investment on a repeating basis well we were fortunate enough that the council on post-secondary education gave us a loan kind of innovation loan to develop our first coursework and then what we did as as we started getting into delivery is we set aside some more resources at our state level that could be used for development cost and that fund is always available for the colleges that want to develop new courses or new programs and that's helped immensely to have that kind of fund sitting there for development as you've been going through the process of developing I guess the the programmer process that you're going to bring to your board for approval what have been either the biggest surprises for you in your team or the feedback that you've been getting from the the folks like Jay has participated on that process I gather that you know raised the the most accreditor oriented issues for yourself and are you seeing that based on the process you're putting in place it's actually going to for example pivot the dialogue or in in practice or just in terms of the the public dialogue with for example the Department of Ed about the accreditors roles do you see that emerging and changing through the process we're not stupid so we contacted the DOE up front after Southern New Hampshire's program was approved by the department then we wanted to see exactly what it was the department approved and used some of that as a basis for the program that or the process that we're developing Jay's organization provides challenges for us because we don't accredit systems and so his comment that all of the institutions then had to ensure that their faculty were involved that their support services were involved you know that they have some say into this stuff it's a challenge for them because systems are great they have that money they have that expertise they're able to bring everybody together but the reality is it doesn't matter on one level because the institutions have to own this this new buddy so I'm excited about Kentucky's model and we have we have thought about what they're doing as well in building this model again the thing that surprised us most I guess was the variety of CBE programs out there and how institutions are defining them most of them are hybrid programs you know where part of the program is going to be in regular our traditional classes and the other parts going to be you know CBE and so what do we do with that you know unique model it would be one thing if there was totally CBE and you know we could focus on that but and we have some of those but dealing with that as well as how this fits into the traditional model is providing interesting thought for us and so we're we're taking a more initially anyway until we get enough of these applications to kind of ferret out exactly what we want to do a an overarching philosophical thing that you need to make sure that these are the areas you address and that you adequately explain what it is you're doing and if possible how that relates to you know the the more traditional stuff that's going on in your institution we right now have about five institutional proposals in and I have very personally asked them to back off until I can come up with a proposal and a procedure so that then I don't have to hear well it's taking you forever to do that well yes taking me forever because I don't know how to do this this is brand new for us and they've been willing to do that so we have those first five that are willing to be subjects for this experiment for us and as we get through that then we'll be able to refine the process but as I said we're still interested in you know who's going to teach these what is the role of faculty how are they developing these programs you know who's the support that's provided even if there are coaches or mentors what are their qualifications you know for doing this you know who put them in charge of whatever it is what are the support services whether they're virtual or not there I mean some institutions don't have that budget to you know to provide the the 24 7 virtual process but there still has to be support services that are available you know do you see I mentioned the degree qualifications profile and also the tuning USA project do you how does that fit with this Bell or does it not yet are they connected yet or are they not and some of the proposals they are and in full disclosure I'm on Lumina's board so I just I want to put that out there so nobody wonders why I didn't say that I think some of the programs are indeed rooted in the DQP especially you know the idea that here are the areas and these are the things that need to be covered we still have the 25% rule that's got to be addressed that's probably the biggest challenge for us the one that says if you're going to give a degree to somebody you have to ensure that 25% of the coursework is done or the competencies in this case are provided by your institution and that there's a hunk of general education competencies that are covered in there as well because there's a 20% of the program or so is general ed competency so right now we're dealing with equivalencies and how what are those equivalencies thank you Amy I want to come back to you with to your initial hesitation around policy because you know what strikes me again as I'm listening is I hear that we're going to end up with a competency-based system that's not perhaps less diverse than the current system we have with the credit hour as an organizing principle and so I'm wondering do we think that we're going to come up with some we might just come up with learning outcomes as an organizing principle with similar diversity so I don't know that that makes the regulatory challenge or the financial aid challenge it makes it different does it necessarily make it better well so I mean I would hope CBE would make it better because it's all predicated on outcomes will it make it simpler not necessarily I mean I think the reason that the credit hour has stuck around for so long is because it's easy to organize right measuring time is easy measuring learning is not so I don't my hope is that it will be better and I think this I mean it certainly will provide challenges I think the one thing I do want to sort of disagree with lots of people who've spoken today who says who have said that CBE isn't for everyone I guess I disagree and it sort of depends on how you define CBE I think you know there's different modalities and there's the sort of learn at your own pace and there's you know there's any time anywhere and there's there's different ways but I think fundamentally the idea that students students employers schools that students transfer to anyone should be able to like know what students are expected and actually do accomplish I think should apply to all of higher education and I think this is where the DQP and tuning come in I think it's not you know it's not just for these very specific technical skills for those people right but it's for everyone I mean I think that people go to higher education for a variety of reasons but at least one reason is because they're trying to learn something right we are learning education institutions higher learning so let's try to figure out you know how it is that we document that we we report to do that already with grades but there's ramping great inflation there's not a lot of I think trust in the grades right now and the credentials which is why I think we're seeing increased interest in competency based education whether or not it's at institutions on the credit side at institutions on the non-credit side for employers who are like I don't want to deal with all the hassle on the credit side I just want those skills and it's very competency based and it's not for credit and you're starting to see badges and Cisco certifications and you know alternatives to master's degrees like general assembly and dev boot camp I mean you're starting to see all of these all of these sort of alternatives disruptions thank you because I think as Mary Alice I think said the skills aren't visible in what in traditional or in in education sort of writ large and I think we need to make them visible and I think that's where sort of tuning comes in and again you know tuning it can it sort of gets to this idea of external validation right it's not just one professor in his or her own classroom setting his or her own standards and measuring against those standards and assessing against those standards but there's a community there's somebody beyond that one professor it made it may be every faculty member in that discipline in that college in that state I think the I think tuning has done something with the American Historical Association they're basically trying to define competencies I believe Cliff can no doubt will correct us in Q and Q and A that they're trying to define competencies for a bachelor's degree in history I mean there are ways to to engage faculty as the external validators or employers so I think that that to me is where all of this becomes interesting is in trying to figure out different ways to really articulate what it is students no one can and can do and we we don't really do a great job of that yet and we need to figure it out I don't think there's one answer but I do think that it should apply to all of higher education and not just for I think if it just applies to the types of programs that we're talking about that are very technical very specific it runs the risk of becoming other and becoming sort of two-tracked and lesser and that's not what we want I think at least not I don't think that's what anybody wants certainly excuse me not what I want I think the the point of CBE is to raise the bar for everyone Louis I think CBE implementation is going to be easier than then we think it might be because of the focus accreditors have on student learning outcomes every academic program in an institution today has to have identified the expected student learning outcomes and so if you've got that laundry list seems like it would be real simple to make them available you know for students to meet outside of a of an institution and maybe not all but certainly in our region all you know so I think that's going to be a lot easier if I might too one of the earlier panels was talking about arts and science faculty and how our humanities faculty and how you're going to get this when I go talk with faculty I tell them my take on this push we were not ready for the impact technology was going to have on jobs we knew it was going to make some easier we had no clue it was going to wipe out as many as it did or change as many as it did that people had been able to do and make an honest days living for their family without an extremely high level of education so that impact was one my own son was in automotive tech for a while and you don't get your car fixed anymore like you did when I was coming up you get circuit breakers replaced that's a very different skill set than being able to turn a wrench the second impact is my generation didn't have as many children as my mother's generation so we don't have as many people going into the workforce I mean they're just not they haven't been born and the third one is the largest percentage of people in the workforce are my age who want to retire sooner than later and so you've got that perfect swirl of all that coming together and now we have these jobs that are high skilled jobs with fewer people to do them but who've got to get out there and do them quickly so we've got to be able to train them somewhere and right now given our system of higher education that's where they learn them in school and arts and humanities faculty feel better about the sudden focus on jobs you know and instead of the education of the individual I mean I was a psychology major I knew I had to get a job my mom wouldn't go let me back home if I didn't get a job but that wasn't why I went to college so much you know that wasn't that in your face why you're but it is today because we need every able body to be able to perform a skill set that will get them employed that's great I want to ask Jay a specific question and then go to one broad question for the group and then move to audience Q&A you know one of the things that's always puzzled me as I as in my own thinking about competency-based ed is that especially competency-based ed that's really occupationally focused where employers play a huge role in identifying competencies is that it assumes a lot about how much employers know and how much they're willing to say sustainably engaged in a conversation with the college for changing needs as talk a little bit if you could talk a little bit about the way that yeah the Kentucky system has been engaging employers and without I'm not asking you to knock employers but just to say do you think that they're up to the task if you wanted to move to you know 40% of your credentials being competency-based do you think employers are up to the task of helping you get there no engagement of employers is important and I'll give you an example of what what we're doing with this integrated engineering technology degree that will be coming online in the spring this is based on the automotive manufacturing technology education collaborative that's almost as bad as tack amtech is this collaborative that is developing the curriculum that all the auto manufacturers can agree upon is the type of curriculum for industrial maintenance technology and again just like the auto technician no longer turns a wrench the auto manufacturer no no longer rivets the parts together it's it's all very technical in nature and with this grant that was to come about several years ago we've been putting together this curriculum and KCTCS is is the lead for this but there are 12 different states that are involved in the amtech curriculum the curriculum is being developed by faculty but being reviewed by the actual manufacturers and the manufacturers give feedback and we tweak it as we go along I will tell you that the manufacturers are very specific in how often they want to review this curriculum and it's it's a change for our faculty because they're used to putting curriculum out there and waiting three years or four years and then reviewing it no the auto manufacturers have said no we're going to be reviewing on a constant basis that feedback has been critical but it's also slowed us down and being able to roll it out for delivery because we can't get them to draw a line in the sand and say it's ready they want to keep tweaking it so that's something that we have to balance as institutions is how often the employer will give us feedback because we have to have time to correct it and we have to try it with students to make sure we're delivering something that is appropriate okay thank you I just want to ask one question of the of the panel and just you know whoever with the panel might want to take it on and then we'll move to audience Q and A one of the questions that has arisen over the years around competency based education and also the use of online net and more recently in in within the beltway policy circles is concerned that you know as we talk about disruptions or new approaches and new pathways like this that you know are we going to end up with systems where we have equity issues where it's you know low-income students or students that haven't been tradition or have been traditionally underserved that they're the ones that are going to be in these all these new models that we're still testing and I'm wondering if folks have had time to think about that is that a major concern is it something that isn't I've seen it you're not experiencing as much a concern we've been tracking our learn-on-demand delivery and the demographics are almost identical with our on-campus delivery with the exception that we have 70 percent females in the in the program which is in our traditional format it's like 5545 females to males so we've seen many more females but as far as diversity is concerned it's almost identical to our on-campus delivery Bell or Amy I think as long as we have options available then the equity issue will be minimized as we've said all morning CBE is not for everybody just like any online program is not for anybody any on-class in-class program is not for everybody so as long as we have the variety and students can find the the style of learning you know that best fits them then I think it'll minimize the equity issues I'll just reiterate what I said before which is I think that if we don't bring transparency in what is expected of and actually achieved by students throughout all of higher education whatever the modalities whatever you know whoever the audience is whoever the students are then I think we I think we already have equity issues I think a lot of them are masked and I think we need to be much more transparent and that all students deserve that unless until we do that we're going to have more we're going to have continuing and maybe even exacerbate these equity issues great I'd like to open it up to the audience for questions do we have a microphone still there's no microphone anymore Alex should be running there he is there he is running in quickly okay we'll get we'll do Cliff first and get that all out in the open right away and there goes the time I'm not going to beat you up Amy you want to read the American Historical Society it has to be a question hang on it has to be a question I have a case cement brain Louie you know that which means concrete examples we haven't heard one concrete competency statement this morning so let me give you one right out of the degree qualifications profile it's the section on identification and use of learning resources information resources something we want students to do with the associates level bachelor's masters it reads as follows the student will identify categorize prioritize and evaluate at least two information resources in his or her major field of study that's a gent generic statement what kinds of things are we talking about Wikipedia comes to mind immediately is an example physicians desk reference chemical information system you can name a lot of them at the associates level they're in technical fields you've got a whole bunch of them at the masters level what the DQP does is it asks the masters level student to contribute to the information resource that's out there in other words it's a ratcheting of challenge now now let me go back we had a discussion about how you assess these things concretely we don't use the word assessment we use assignments because something that faculty do every week and if you don't have faculty you're not going to get this thing any competency based whatever you want to call it here's one that we developed in the late 1970s listen carefully see if you can handle this one and this was at William Patterson College in New Jersey which is part of the ASCU institutions that were dealing with this in the degree qualification it's used in the degree qualifications profile as an example of something that deals with integrated knowledge and global learning suppose a new method form of energy was developed that when we turned on the switch would slow the rotation of the earth from 24 to 26 hours a day before we can flip the switch an environmental impact statement must be filed you have a blank piece of paper and 30 minutes and give us the chapter heads and sub chapter heads of that environmental impact statement you want something that's concrete that deals with integrative learning that deals with global issues that deals with differential perspective you just got it and that's the kind of thing that faculty give every week and one of the objectives of the whole degree qualifications when Bell knows this well from discussions on the Lumina Board is to involve faculty more and more to get more precise about the kinds of assignments they give in relation to what you're calling today competency based outcomes and notice the way those competency that competency based statement on information resources was written active verbs no dead end nouns no critical thinking no awareness no appreciation if those are dead end nouns tell us what students do when you write an information resource and I hope you can carry this forward Lewis thank you thank you Cliff amen so I'll I'll I guess I'll put I'll try to pose that as a question to Bell or Jay and to suggest is that what you're seeing emerging I mean you're seeing that that's the kind of work that's happening on the campuses within your purview and in your systems without a doubt yes and within this system we've had several workshops for our faculty who teach in this environment to how they can develop authentic assessments every course starts off with a pre-test that Kaola like this that starts off with a measure of prior learning if the student can show proficiency they can immediately jump to the post test and if they pass the post test they get the credit for the module and can move on as they're moving through a module they might have three or four tests along the way but what we're working on is make sure those assessments are more authentic and can apply the learning more than just a multiple choice type test and it was on that basis that I said that this might be easier than we think it is on many levels since institutions have already identified expected student learning outcomes in every program they offer we have a summer institute that this coming summer will be the 11th one that we will have had that is designed to help faculty one identify a student learning outcome and to write it in an active form and secondly how to assess it and third how to use the results of those assessments in improving the program and we have limited to 700 people every summer this coming summer we'll have a thousand so there is definite interest in it another question from the audience right up here Evelyn Gansglas from CLASP my question is for Dr. Box my understanding of Kentucky system is that for years you've had partial credit or that actually you have even in the workforce arena you don't have non-credit anymore that it's all in smaller chunks of credit and you were really first of all is that true and then how has all of that work really related to what you've been talking about about online instruction the way you were talking about it it sounded like competency-based instruction was equivalent to online when in fact there's this whole body of work that's been going on and trying to connect non-credit and credit education and just could you talk about that a little bit you're absolutely right we've chunked down our curriculum several years ago but the purpose of that was primarily for workforce training and we deliver at least half or if not more of our workforce training in a credit environment and so we had to find a way to do that and that way was to chunk down our curriculum to meet the demands of an employer who wanted us to bring in just a specific training module for those folks so we've been delivering that in a workforce training environment but we weren't delivering it in an on-campus environment to credit students who were there for a traditional semester it was through the online delivery of learn on demand that we were able to find a way to deliver it in these chunks and it makes sense to a student who is going toward a credential okay another question from the audience right back there gentleman with the beard thank you I'm sorry to monopolize with the second question but Cliff and I both come from New York and that happens for Jay box that Brooklyn Cliff for Jay box a question you talk about coordinating with employers AAC and you has done a number of surveys that show a strong commitment on the part of employers to broader kinds of non-technical skills some of us are questioning whether that's lip service or reality in terms of programming and I'm wondering if in your employer feedback you're seeing that kind of commitment to broader liberal arts skills or are they focused on the technical technical primarily although you've heard the comment about the needs for soft skills or whatever you want to call them and that's the major dialogue and you know that gets us into an area about how are we going to accomplish that you you want these you want these students through programs quicker and directly into the to workforce and in Kentucky a student can go into a first level certificate in a technical program and if they're not college ready they've tested developmental ed they can skip the developmental ed sequence completely because it's not required in that first level certificate so we've had to say we can't be turning out these folks even with the first level credential if they if they don't have basic math skills reading and and writing and communication skills so what we've been doing as part of the accelerating opportunity grant is that we've been working on contextualizing those reading writing and math skills and and team teaching with a developmental education or adult ed education instructor in the classroom with the technical instructor that is really pleasing the employer because we're having folks come through with with both sides both skill sets however it's it's very expensive and very difficult to do and we're looking for a way to sustain it so if you know of any multi-billionaire that wants to contribute a lot of money for us we'd certainly take it we have time for one last question from the audience great gentleman right there too Hi, Jarrett Cummings with EDUCAUSE I was wondering if you could speak to the importance of sustained dialogue between the institutional academic leadership and institutional technology leadership and making competency-based education not just possible but successful we're looking at you oh okay yes well I will tell you that seven years ago six years ago when we started this initiative I was the vice president over technology and I drove this initiative from the technology side first and we wanted to make sure the technology could do what the academic side of the house really needed and you have to have that clear expectation for both and because I started on that side before coming over to the chancellor's role it it helped me understand the importance for that constant communication back with the all the the technology folks to make sure that we were collaborating and coordinating our efforts the big challenges with any kind of program like this is of course we are a people soft environment we had to get people soft to be able to understand chunked environments chunked and how we're going to start anytime and end different sequences and how you do that and now our our technology folks are so excited about it we're talking about the the new transcript that we're going to start developing in the next year which aligns the competencies with the courses and we'll actually display it and that's something that our technology folks are thrilled about this how we can do this we can do that that's the kind of innovation you really need is is your technology folks working with your academic folks to make this happen that's actually a great way to end I think that the the changing technology in particular technology infrastructure in partnership in tandem with the academic evolution is really where the heart of CBE is is coming it's going to look different in different places but those two together actually is is critical so I want to thank everyone for joining us and if you join me in thanking our our panel thank you very much