CBL: From Content-Driven to Skills-Driven Learning

CBL: From Content-Driven to Skills-Driven Learning is a self-paced course that supports educators in understanding the principles of competency-based learning and how to take steps towards designing competencies and learning outcomes. You'll investigate examples of competency architectures to familiarize yourself with the way other schools and learning organizations are adopting CBL and work through a design process that will allow you to walk away with a usable competency-based learning rubric. This is the first in a series of five self-paced courses about practical and purposeful shifts that educators can make in their classrooms. This course is self-paced and open for one year to participate.

This course is applicable to educators across grade levels, content areas, and contexts. This course is:

• Collaborative: Ideal for individual teachers, school teams, learning leaders, and instructional coaches
• Flexible: Fits within a teacher schedule; you choose your time commitment in this experience.
• Practical: Designed for immediate application; grounded in foundations of competency-based learning while prioritizing action steps educators can take now.

In this course, you will:

• Familiarize yourself with the goal of competencies (transfer) and some criteria for writing excellent competencies that define meaningful learning experiences.

• Investigate examples of competency architectures to familiarize yourself with the way other schools and learning organizations approach articulating skills as learning targets.

• Work through the three stages of articulating essential skills, including writing a competency, brainstorming learning outcomes, and designing rubrics.

The purpose of the Competency-Based Learning series is to guide educators in translating the theoretical underpinnings of CBL into sustainable classroom practices. The CBL series offers self-paced courses that are approximately five hour experiences. Each course is open from the first of the month to the end of the month. Participants engage asynchronously on their own timelines.

Regardless of where you teach and the language your school uses for learning goals and grades, a CBL approach offers a mindset and a framework for supporting students in developing skills that transfer across subjects and contexts and that contribute to environments and systems that promote educational equity. You do not need to be an educator in a “CBL school” to join in this series; all five courses are designed to apply to any classroom and curriculum.

Each course is self-paced and includes a downloadable PDF workbook for design and reflection. Participants will leave with practical, tangible work products that can be applied directly to their practice, whether teaching in online, in-person, or in hybrid learning environments this year.

These five courses have relevance as both a series and as individual courses taken on their own. Participants will retain access to all courses to allow for ample time to revisit ideas, resources, and examples.