The Shared Competencies operating system is currently undergoing its pilot testing phase. The system is structured in three key elements:
Capacity Building involves:
- Communicating the Shared Competencies to key campus constituents such as school/college leaders, faculty, students, and programs/units that work closely with students.
- Creating Communities of Practice to establish what competency means, determine the University’s criteria for success, develop assessment tools to review student work, and plan professional development for faculty/staff to support competency development.
- Establishing an infrastructure to ensure the operating system is sustainable and meaningful.
Mapping involves:
- Faculty engaging in collaborative, program-level discussions to align student learning outcomes to the Shared Competencies.
- Faculty reviewing the preliminary mapping conducted by IEA and either revise or approve it by March 31, 2021.
- Faculty referring and using the Discovery Toolkit to guide discussions and complete mapping steps.
- Faculty engaging in collaborative discussions to tag courses with a specific competency designation, allowing students to search by competency in the course registration process for the 2023-2024 academic year.
Outcomes Review involves:
- Embedding the current Ad Hoc Committee on Shared Competencies in the University Senate structure. This new standing committee will oversee assessment and accreditation at the University.
- Reviewing student work to identify strengths and gaps in student learning. Either the communities of practice will review a sample of student work or faculty teaching tagged courses will score student work using an institutional rubric.
- Engaging seniors and alumni in reflecting on their competency development through annual reflections.