and enrichment needed to personalize their academic experience. For the VLACS student, the experience is self-paced. Students are able to move on when ready. When they start a new course, they are assigned a teacher who monitors their progress, provides ongoing feedback and assessment of their work, and conducts regular virtual meetings with them and, in some cases, their parents, throughout the learning experience.
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU; http://degrees.snhu.edu) in Manchester, New Hampshire, has a similar model for its College for America (http://collegeforamerica.org) program. Through its redesigned model, SNHU has managed to change the role of its teachers from classroom-based lecturers or instructors to professionals who are part instructor, part learning coach, and part curriculum and content developer. The notion of a learning coach—an individual who can help students set academic goals for themselves and put all of the pieces together when they are learning a new concept or skill—is a new idea for colleges or universities, much like it is for traditional K–12 schools.
Most traditional schools don’t have the luxury or the desire to use an online model to deliver all direct instruction. For these schools, developing a move-when-ready model includes the use of blended learning. Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker (2015) explain their (and the most widely used) definition for blended learning in education:
Blended learning is any formal education program in which a student learns at least part through online learning, with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace. (p. 34)
Blended learning takes place at least in part in a supervised physical school location, often the student’s neighborhood school. It is an integrated experience that brings together in a seamless balance both face-to-face instruction and online coursework for individual students based on their learning needs.
Horn and Staker (2015) propose several blended learning strategies that schools can use to develop move-when-ready systems. There are rotational models in which students rotate on a fixed schedule between face-to-face and online learning modalities. There are flex models that rely on online modules as the foundation and then bring in face-to-face instruction when it is relevant or appropriate to do so. There are à la carte models that provide students with the option to take full courses either traditionally or online during the school day. Finally, there are enriched virtual models that require students to engage in a set number of face-to-face learning sessions but then allow students to customize the rest of their learning experience with online work. These blended learning strategies are the key to helping schools develop structures for students to advance upon demonstrated mastery, the first characteristic of a competency-based learning system.
Competencies Include Explicit, Measurable, and Transferable Learning Objectives That Empower Students
Typical competency-based learning schools organize their courses into a series of measureable learning objectives that provide the foundation for the courses and ultimately for the grades that a student receives. A common practice in competency-based learning schools is to require that students demonstrate mastery on each learning objective in order to receive credit for the course as a whole. This practice, many argue, encourages students to take responsibility for their learning, increasing both student engagement and motivation. To understand this organizational structure, it helps to examine some real-life examples.
In the Henry County Schools (n.d.a) in McDonough, Georgia, students in high school language arts classes work toward several graduation competencies. For example, “Read closely to analyze and evaluate all forms of (i.e. complex literary and informational) texts” (Henry County Schools, n.d.a, p. 10). From this overarching statement, each language arts course then has the following explicit, measurable, transferable learning objectives (called performance indicators in Henry County’s competency system):
› Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support an analysis of the text, including any applicable primary or High School sources, and determine both explicit and implicit meanings, such as inferences that can be drawn from the text and where the text leaves matters uncertain.
› Determine the central ideas of the text and provide an objective summary.
› Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
› Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone of a text or texts, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly effective for a desired purpose.
› Analyze how an author chose to structure a text and how that structure contributes to the text’s meaning and its aesthetic and rhetorical impact.
› Determine an author’s point of view, purpose, or rhetorical strategies in a text, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.
› Evaluate information from multiple sources presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., print, digital, visual, quantitative) to address a question or solve a problem.
› Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.
› Integrate information from diverse sources into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, evaluating discrepancies among sources. (p. 10)
In the Rochester (New Hampshire) School Department (n.d.), the grade 3 mathematics curriculum is organized into the following learning objectives:
› Operations and Algebraic Thinking: Students will demonstrate the ability to compute accurately, make reasonable estimates, understand meanings of operations and use algebraic notation to represent and analyze patterns and relationships.
› Number and Numeration in Base Ten/Fractions: Students will demonstrate the ability to understand the meanings, uses, and representations of numbers as well as equivalent names for numbers.
› Measurement: Students will demonstrate the ability to understand the systems and processes of measurement, using appropriate techniques, tools, units, and formulas in making measurements.
› Data: Students will demonstrate the ability to represent and analyze data.
› Geometry: Students will demonstrate the ability to investigate characteristics and properties of two and three dimensional geometric shapes and apply transformations and symmetry in geometric situations.
› Fact Fluency: Students will demonstrate the ability to quickly and accurately verbalize and compute fact fluency, (p. 1)
There is nothing inherently unique about the learning objectives in the Henry County and Rochester schools. Many will recognize them as being based on English language arts and mathematics CCSS (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGA] & Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010a, 2010b). What sets both of these school systems apart is not that they have developed these learning objectives, but rather that the objectives have been integrated into courses and are used to promote both student engagement and motivation at a level that most schools have not yet reached.
What sets both of these
