2016 Annual Conference

Our team of students and their mentor showcase a competency-based, situational approach to learning. Empowerment by means of education among students, community residents, and DePaul University-School for New Learning builds and maintains relationships for social action/civic engagement while facilitating competence in academic knowledge and skills.

This session focuses on the experiences of students, instructors, mentors, and course designers in a competency-based graduate program. Through the action-reflection cycle, the participants and presenters in this session extract practices in teaching, learning, and assessing that are useful for program designers, instructors, students, assessors, and evaluators in CBE-inspired programs in colleges and universities. Those interested in applied program designs and relevant adult education processes may find the varying perspectives and practices useful for consideration in their own teaching and learning settings. Those interested in expanded service-learning and community engagement may be inspired for enhancing community outreach and relations.

CBE has been a hot buzz word these days in college and university faculty meetings. The DoE dedicates attention to it while not addressing the difficulties with matching CBE to traditional, credit-hour based formats. This session will address both the administrative and instructional aspects of designing and implementing CBE with a social change and civic engagement agenda. The CBE concept is not necessarily "innovative" nowadays; however, the approach we will present is adapted to today's multi-generational learning groups in academia, and it offers a means for university-community relationship building. Given the issues in urban and suburban as much as rural environments, civic, political, and social engagement by all community stakeholders offers mutual support and learning toward personal and community development. CBE within asset-based, problem-posing approaches, recognizes the value of anyone's skills and knowledge to engage students and community residents in development by means of education. Our team has worked in under-resourced Chicago communities and provides a snap shot (in this session) about the pro's and con's of how universities and colleges can engage in teaching timely and relevant skills while maximizing the very resources students in higher education constitute when working with and for community members. Handouts enhance this session.