The ideas in this New York Time article can be applied to many different areas of education in addition to higher ed. For those who do not wish to read the entire article, I’ll provide a brief summary. There is a recent movement in higher education to grant degrees for the amount of knowledge and skills you can demonstrate; this is in place of how long you have studied. In order to keep down the costs (money AND time) of obtaining a college degree, higher education institutions have begun to offer credit for finishing the work. These “competency-based” programs are all about outcomes, providing certification once learning requirements can be demonstrated. Many institutions, including the University of Wisconsin, have started testing these programs, and from what I can tell they are exclusively online.

Are you skeptical of these new programs? You’re not alone. A lot of questions (some are my own, and some are in the article) are being raised about whether or not degrees obtained this way can be compared to those conferred by a traditional college or university. Is the quality of education provided high enough? What about the classroom experience? If credits can be earned quickly, can we be sure the students have learned anything? How can we be sure they have learned the right things?

My largest concern is about assessment. In most areas of learning, it is a constant challenge for instructors to know how to create assessments that reflect what a student has (and should have) learned throughout the course. My initial reaction to this article was fear that it may be impossible to grade a student who a professor has never met, and who sprinted through the material in three weeks. But this is not entirely unique to online courses. College and university courses usually have only a few graded assignments; they just take four months to complete and occasionally an instructor will actually interact with the student. So in this light, any concern about assessment may actually be misguided.

This can also be applied to K-12 education. The role of assessment is growing in importance every day it seems. After No Child Left Behind, the results of standardized tests carry weighty consequences. If we’re comfortable with assessment when applied frequently (as in K-12), and infrequently (in higher education, online and/or on campus), what is it about a large standardized test that is so different and controversial? Is it the weighty consequences? College exams have weighty consequences. Is it their frequency? Some courses only have a midterm and a final exam.

I find myself unable to provide a full answer to the questions raised by this article and my own analysis of its significance. Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think.