Applying service design in competency‐based curriculum development

Abstract

| INTRODUC TI ONHigher education institutions are adopting competency-based education (CBE) models because they want to become more learnercentered and improve outcomes for graduates (Nodine, 2016). CBE is inherently learner-centered because it "enables personalized learning to provide flexibility and supports to ensure mastery of the highest standards possible. With clear and calibrated understanding of proficiency, learning can be tailored to each student's strengths, needs, and interests and enable student voice and choice in what, how, when, and where they learn" (CompetencyWorks, 2012).Although implementation of CBE can take a multitude of forms, the common theme is demonstrated learning rather than seat time.Our institution has a long history in online adult education in the traditional time-based model and is venturing into CBE to provide flexible, learner-centered options for our student market. We, the CBE curriculum team, were tasked with managing CBE development across colleges within the institution. To define our expectations for CBE program development, we looked for resources available to help institutions get started in creating quality CBE programs, such as the Competency-Based Education Network; however, while there are various frameworks and standards published, they do not include detailed examples or blueprints for implementing those standards in practice. Even if a detailed blueprint did exist, no one model or framework is going to perfectly fit every institution's needs. Therefore, we realized the need to research various potential applications of CBE and our unique student market to effectively customize a quality, learner-centered, competency-based learning experience for our students.Viewing students as customers who deserve and demand a quality learning experience and evidence to show employers that they have developed valuable skills to a level of competence upon graduation, we applied service design principles to the design and development of a CBE initiative. Service design is a methodology for creating user-centered services that takes into account the customer experience holistically, ensuring that all aspects of a service work together as one to give the customer the best possible experience (Pang, 2009). Specifically, designers systematically manage and intentionally plan the user experience by looking at all service elements that deliver the experience as part of one system (Pullman & Gross, 2004). When designing a service experience, designers must identify and make decisions about all parts of the service. The challenge is making sure that the customer experience is intentionally designed for the target customer market (Goldstein, Johnston, Duffy, & Rao, 2002). In our institution, service design was leveraged to develop CBE policies, operational processes, IT requirements, and curriculum. However, the focus of this article will be on how we leveraged service design specifically to develop curriculum.As CBE was a completely new endeavor for our institution, and we had no concr...

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