SBCTC’s Competency-based Education Business Transfer Degree:
Course Design Process
The Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) is creating 18 courses for a
competency-based education (CBE) option for students earning a business transfer associate’s degree. Courses
in the program are self-paced, online and designed using open content. Lumen Learning, a company with
expertise creating OER-based courseware, is facilitating the course design process.
Roles in the CBE Course Design Process
Several stakeholders fill important roles in the course design process for CBE courses:
Stakeholder
Role
Current SBCTC Faculty
Define competencies and select content; ensure consistent learning outcomes
between existing transfer courses and CBE courses
Teaching Faculty for
CBE Courses
Final course review; facilitate student progress through course; develop,
administer and grade final assessments
Lumen Learning
Process facilitation; pedagogy and instructional design; course-building in adaptive
platform; technical support; learning data analysis to recommend improvements
SBCTC Project Team
Project oversight; learning data analysis to recommend program improvements
Design Process
Lumen Learning facilitates the entire course design process with strong participation from SBCTC faculty
identified through their college instruction offices. For each course, system faculty work together to specify
competencies and granular subCBE Course Design Process Overview
competencies for each course,
matching competencies to defined
content and outcomes for existing
transfer courses. These
competencies undergo a public
review and comment period, after
which Lumen and SBCTC faculty
collaborate to review and address
input.
With competencies defined, the
Lumen team works with system
faculty to select and adapt high
quality open content identified for
each course. Faculty members also
select and adapt formative
assessments that underlie courses'
adaptive, personalized learning
pathways.
1
Course Design Requirements
SBCTC designated a set of CBE course requirements to ensure the quality of the educational experience the
program will provide. These include:
 SBCTC faculty act as subject experts throughout the course design process.
 Competencies match the expected content and outcomes of the existing transfer course.
 All competencies and course content are openly licensed.
 Machine-graded formative assessments are used to adapt and personalize learning pathways.
 Human-graded summative assessments evaluate students’ ability to integrate and apply course
content in workplace-quality work products.
 Course materials are delivered through Canvas, making it easy to use other elearning tools for
student interaction.
Teaching faculty, hired to teach the CBE courses, develop the final, human-graded, summative assessments for
the competencies. The Lumen Learning team assists with pedagogy and adaptive structure, designing courses to
provide personalized learning pathways based on each student’s prior learning and where they need to continue
working to develop mastery.
The Lumen Learning team
builds the courses using an
elearning tool called the
Candela Mastery Platform.
This tool supports the
competency-based and
adaptive features of the
courses and integrates into
Canvas. Teaching faculty
review and finalize the course
content. They also select other
elearning tools to facilitate
student interaction and
support including Canvas,
Panopto, Collaborate, etc.
Instruction
As CBE courses begin, the teaching faculty interact directly with students. Together with completion coaches,
faculty members work to assist students and keep them on track towards degree completion. Students and
faculty have visibility into competency dashboards for each course that show requirements and student
progress towards each one.
Teaching faculty administer final assessments and assign final grades. As students demonstrate mastery across
all competencies and requirements in a given course, the course appears on student transcripts as a five-credit
course, similar to any other transfer course.
Continuous Course Improvement
Informed by student learning data, behavioral data and content analytics, Lumen and SBCTC will make regular
updates and improvements to the curriculum based on a range of empirical data.
2