Understanding competency structures


A competency structure is a hierarchy composed of three basic elements:

  • Competencies
  • Learning objectives
  • Activities

Although you can create multiple activities, learning objectives, and competencies within a competency structure, the most fundamental structure must contain at least one competency, one learning objective, and one activity.

If you share a competency structure with a child org unit, the child org unit must be associated with its own activities since activities cannot be shared between org units.

Element

Description

Competency structures inside and beyond your course

If you create a competency structure as part of a course offering, it is accessible only within that course offering. For example, you can create a competency to represent the entire course, learning objectives to represent specific units, and associate activities to each unit.

You can create competency structures inside org units such as departments, semesters, or the organization to track users’ achievements beyond a course offering. You can also share these competency structures with multiple course offerings and evaluate the competencies and learning objectives within specific child org units. This enables users to complete the competency in stages over time, working on different learning objectives within different courses. If a competency structure is large and complex, acquiring all the knowledge and skills associated with it might involve many learning experiences across several courses.

Learning objectives

Learning objectives are the skills, abilities, or knowledge a person must acquire to become competent in a given domain. Create learning objective statements that are directly measurable through related activities. Other vocabulary used to describe learning objectives can include indicators, criteria, requirements, and learning outcomes.

Activities

Activities are the only elements that can be graded in a competency structure. You can use existing tools in iLearn Learning Environment to create activities, and you can create external manual assessment activities such as a concert performance or an oral presentation.

You can associate activities with relevant learning objectives, and have users complete them so you can evaluate their learning objective achievements. Activities include quizzes, surveys, assignment submissions folders, discussion topics, grade items, manual assessments, and content.

You can add measurable criteria to the activity and set the assessment method as a requirement to completing the learning objective. If a user's activity assessment meets the minimum required threshold set for that activity (for example, minimum rubric level score, minimum numeric score), then the user achieves or is on the path to achieving the associated learning objective.