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Re-Engineering Information Technology Design Considerations for Competency Education

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Re-Engineering Information Technology Design Considerations for Competency Education ISSUE BRIEF Re-Engineering Information Technology Design Considerations for Competency Education WRITTEN BY: Liz Glowa WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY: Susan Patrick Acknowledgments We wish to thank all of the people and organizations listed here. These extraordinary educators bring creativity, a deep commitment to our children, and a love of learning to their work. Without their generosity in sharing their knowledge, this paper would simply not be possible. Abbott Advisor Group Educate MedBiquitous Jill Abbot, Chief Executive Officer Scott Bacon, ThreeShapes LLC Valerie Smothers, Deputy Director Adams County School District 50 EffectiveSC New Hampshire Department of Dr. Oliver Grenham, Chief Education Lance Christmann Education Officer Paul Leather, Deputy Commissioner Florida Virtual School Michael Schwartz, Data Systems Advanced Distributed Learning Jennifer Whiting, Senior Manager, Collaborative Labs Product Development Quality Information Partners, Inc. Jonathan Poltrack, Technical Team Jim Goodell Damon Regan, Advanced Gartner Distributed Learning Initiative David Irwin, K–12 Education Practice Sakai Lead Janice A. Smith, Ph.D. Agilix Labs: BrainHoney and Buzz Janette Park, Managing Partner Mark Luetzelschwab, Senior Vice Terry Denoyer, Associate Director, Sanborn Regional High School President, Product Development Consulting Brian M. Stack, Principal and Marketing Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation School Interoperability Framework Business Education Compact Brandt Redd, Senior Technology Larry Fruth, Chief Executive Officer Diane Smith, Director, Teaching and Officer, U.S. Program Timber Ridge School Learning Initiative Georgia Virtual Learning Greater Albany Public School Council of Chief State School Christina Clayton, Director, Virtual District, Oregon Officers Learning Jason Hoffert-Hay, Principal Maureen Matthews Wentworth, Joe Cozart, Associate Director, 2Revolutions LLC Program Director, Education Data Strategic Planning Bryan Setser, Partner and Information Systems GlobalScholar: Pinnacle Suite UCompass and Octane Rose Colby Rebecca Shepherd, Product Edward Mansouri, Founder and Competency Education Consultant Manager, Pinnacle Instruction Chief Executive Officer William Zaggle, Chief Academic Desire2Learn Incorporated Officer, GlobalScholar University of Southern California Terri-Lynn Brown, Director, Learning USC Hybrid High School Strategies IMS Global Learning Consortium David Dwyer, Ph.D. Rob Abel, Chief Executive Officer Diploma Plus Virtual Learning Academy Charter Gloria M. Pineda, National Network K–12 Inc. School, New Hampshire Director Mike Depalma, Director, Product Steve Kossakoski, Chief Executive Akili Moses Israel, Executive Director Strategy and Management Officer The EASL Institute Kaplan, Inc. xpLOR Peggy Baker Bror Saxberg, Chief Learning Officer Brent Mundy, Blackboard Inc. Ednovate–USC Hybrid High School Knewton Inc. Xyleme Andrew Lippert Ken Goldstein, Vice President, Sales Jeff Katzman, Vice President and and Academic Outreach Educational Achievement Chief Learning Officer Authority of Michigan Maine Department of Education Mary Esselman, Chief Officer, Dan Hupp, Director, Standards and Accountability, Equity, and Assessment Innovation About Competency Works CompetencyWorks is a collaborative initiative drawing on the knowledge of its partners and advisory board. The International Association for K–12 Online Learning (iNACOL) is the lead organization with project management facilitated by MetisNet. We are deeply grateful for the leadership and support from the partner organizations American Youth Policy Forum, Jobs for the Future, and the National Governors Association. Their vision and creative partnership have been instrumental in the development of CompetencyWorks. You can learn more about competency education at CompetencyWorks.org as well as links and materials for all the resources mentioned in the paper on the Competency-Based Pathways wiki. CompetencyWorks is made possible with the generous support of our funders: Please refer to this paper as Glowa, Liz 2013. Re-Engineering Information Technology Design Considerations for Competency Education, A CompetencyWorks Issue Brief, International Association for K–12 Online Learning. Re-Engineering Information Technology: Design Considerations for Competency Education 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Getting Ahead: Mature IT for Competency Education by Susan Patrick 5 I. Introduction 9 II. Understanding Competency Education 11 III. Designing an Information Technology Conceptual Architecture for Competency Education 12 IV. Current Practice and Information Systems 21 V. Continuing Development and Evolution of Systems 28 VI. Conclusion 35 APPENDIX A: Multiple Initiatives Working on Interoperability, Data Standards, and Technical Services 36 APPENDIX B: Writing an RFI or RFP: Competency Education Information Technology Considerations 40 APPENDIX C: Glossary 43 4 WWW.COMPETENCYWORKS.ORG GETTING AHEAD: Mature IT for Competency Education By Susan Patrick President and CEO of the International Association for K–12 Online Learning e are past the tipping point. Online and blended learning have become an essential part of America’s education system, expanding educational options for students and enabling personalization. Most Wimportantly, digital learning challenges the lock-step, batch-processing, and labeling of students in our schools. Students can and want to progress at their own pace, demonstrating their knowledge, collaborating with experts, teachers, tutors and other students, taking the time they need to master new concepts and skills. The result is a growing demand for student-centered, transformative digital learning using competency education as the underpinning and central focus on student learning. During the last decade, competency education has taken root in our country. Over two-thirds of our states have adopted policies that enable credits to be awarded based on proficiency in a subject. Districts are showing results when they embrace a more personalized, competency-based model. Schools are exploring new and powerful ways to design around proficiency. Competency education may take place in traditional classrooms, in online courses, or in blended learning environments. Our schools are pushing toward a more flexible education system that can respond to the dramatically diverse needs of our children; however, the policies and infrastructure within our education system are built upon the batch-processing, factory model that continues to chug along producing low achievement and huge gaps in students’ knowledge and skills, with grade-based variances covering up seriously low attainment. It’s time to create the upward trajectory and crush the curve. The old grading “curve” by definition assumes divergent expectations across a cohort of kids. Competency education instead creates a slope of high expectations for each child—an upward trajectory showing accomplishments and skills for success and readiness for college and careers in a global economy. Capturing each student’s profile as they progress along the trajectory, upward and onward, over time, must be captured in the IT systems, as well. Every student is guided on an upward trajectory. The student’s proficiency pathway means each student is moving upward and building skills and knowledge on their own pathway through mastery of standards. Furthermore, our information systems need to do more than act as electronic grade books with an end-of- year test. We need to build smart information technology (IT) systems that chart levels of proficiency, compile portfolios of student work, offer pathways to competency, and capture meaningful assessment down to the level of the academic standard. We can’t afford to continue investing in information systems that support the top-down, linear, time-based model. It is important that as a country, at the school, district, state, and federal levels, we design—and demand—IT systems and products that support competency-based education. Competency Education Requires New IT Solutions Competency education is student-centric, personalizing student progress so that every child has adequate time and support to reach proficiency every step of the way. So too must the IT system be student-centric, academic standards-based in its organization of data. Students can learn in different ways at different times. School designs Re-Engineering Information Technology: Design Considerations for Competency Education 5 and operations will become more innovative and adaptable, responding to student needs by providing greater services and options. Competency education fundamentally changes the way the educational enterprise is organized around the student needs, and thus must have a dynamic IT system to support it. The current IT systems are designed around three principles that are at odds with the emerging models of education. First, learning isn’t always linear. The traditional model of education, and our current IT systems, assumes that students follow a linear progression to high school graduation. However, the more we learn about learning, the more we understand that learning is multidimensional. Students may vary in how they progress across the different academic disciplines. Their pace may slow down as they dive deep into a topic or need to spend more time to understand. High student mobility means that there will always be students with gaps that need adaptive tests to find the holes in their knowledge and skills. They will require support for addressing the gaps, taking a step
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