Curriculum for competency-based education requires a different design approach than standard lock-step methods. Many see it as chaos and out of control due to the variability of where students could be throughout a course and across a program as a whole. I have been very effective in controlling that chaos by employing principles learned while completing a Master of Education in Instructional Technology and Learning Science at USU. My basic approach in Canvas is to allow students to move at their own pace until they get to something they don't understand. I built the very first, and some of the last courses a student takes in our programs, where beginning courses assume very little prior knowledge, and then we build from there. As a student moves through curriculum, they may do so very quickly or slowly, but what I'm always looking for is that moment where they get stuck or don't understand something. Assignment submissions are frequent enough to measure ZPD. When they hit those moments, which is different for each student, I as the instructor help them one on one get past the part they don't understand, and they are able to keep moving forward until they hit the next Zone of Proximal Development. The links below demonstrate a variety of methods used:
Modules Example - This page shows all of the course materials for Microcontroller 1 which has become a curriculum standard in the Automated Manufacturing and Electronics departments.
Lab Sample 1 - This page is an example of the first lab assignment a student completes in Microcontroller 1. In a course like this I always start assuming a student knows nothing. It's always interesting to discover terminology or skills that we assume a student knows coming in, but then discover later that they do not. I try to make sure that instructions are clear, and make sure they are consistent across labs, modules, and courses. This not only creates a better student experience, but also makes my life easier as an instructor. Most of the lab submissions are done through video submission, and there are times when I have had 40-50 students submissions to grade per day. Most of the time I have around 10-15 submissions per day across all courses which I can complete with meaningful feedback within about an hour.
Lab Sample 2 - All of the labs in the first four modules in this course are building up to the labs I have in module 4. In this lab students use an H-Bridge for the first time. All of the modules up through lab four were designed with the Utah State Board of Education (USBE) Standards and Objectives for Robotics 1 in mind. I was asked to serve on the USBE committee for Robotics 1 and 2 for the state, and most of the objectives as well as state test questions in both came from me. They wanted more real world, industry recognized objectives, and I came to my first meeting with 4 pages of them.
Lab Sample 3 - In this lab I apply a little bit of game theory. Students build an Arduino car using coding and wiring principles from all of the previous labs. I decided recently to add a leader board to this class as well, based upon similar success in other courses. I have students right now who are going back and completing this lab so that they can get on the leader board and take home some stickers that I created for those who get all the way to the end of the maze.
Robotics Discussion - In my Intro to Robotics course I use discussions to foster some debate around robotic systems. Students are self paced, and so they have to respond to someone who may not even be in the class anymore, but over time it does create an interesting dialog regarding some of the most important robotics issues in our time. I also use discussions throughout all of my courses for troubleshooting where students can ask questions and get responses from me and other students. These discussions are open all of the time, and become a kind of frequently asked questions area for each module. At the end of the year I review them to see if there are common questions that are being asked where curriculum modifications need to be made.
Binary Decimal Quiz - This is one of the quizzes I use in my curriculum. I always follow quizzes up with a lab where they actually see the math in action. Here I'm checking for understanding to make sure they watched the video and understand the overall principle. Instead of just having them do the math, I try to show some real world examples in the quiz itself. After they complete the quiz, students complete a lab where they turn on multiple outputs at the same time using Binary decimal values in the robot commands on a real robot.
Modules Example - This page shows all of the course materials for Microcontroller 1 which has become a curriculum standard in the Automated Manufacturing and Electronics departments.
Lab Sample 1 - This page is an example of the first lab assignment a student completes in Microcontroller 1. In a course like this I always start assuming a student knows nothing. It's always interesting to discover terminology or skills that we assume a student knows coming in, but then discover later that they do not. I try to make sure that instructions are clear, and make sure they are consistent across labs, modules, and courses. This not only creates a better student experience, but also makes my life easier as an instructor. Most of the lab submissions are done through video submission, and there are times when I have had 40-50 students submissions to grade per day. Most of the time I have around 10-15 submissions per day across all courses which I can complete with meaningful feedback within about an hour.
Lab Sample 2 - All of the labs in the first four modules in this course are building up to the labs I have in module 4. In this lab students use an H-Bridge for the first time. All of the modules up through lab four were designed with the Utah State Board of Education (USBE) Standards and Objectives for Robotics 1 in mind. I was asked to serve on the USBE committee for Robotics 1 and 2 for the state, and most of the objectives as well as state test questions in both came from me. They wanted more real world, industry recognized objectives, and I came to my first meeting with 4 pages of them.
Lab Sample 3 - In this lab I apply a little bit of game theory. Students build an Arduino car using coding and wiring principles from all of the previous labs. I decided recently to add a leader board to this class as well, based upon similar success in other courses. I have students right now who are going back and completing this lab so that they can get on the leader board and take home some stickers that I created for those who get all the way to the end of the maze.
Robotics Discussion - In my Intro to Robotics course I use discussions to foster some debate around robotic systems. Students are self paced, and so they have to respond to someone who may not even be in the class anymore, but over time it does create an interesting dialog regarding some of the most important robotics issues in our time. I also use discussions throughout all of my courses for troubleshooting where students can ask questions and get responses from me and other students. These discussions are open all of the time, and become a kind of frequently asked questions area for each module. At the end of the year I review them to see if there are common questions that are being asked where curriculum modifications need to be made.
Binary Decimal Quiz - This is one of the quizzes I use in my curriculum. I always follow quizzes up with a lab where they actually see the math in action. Here I'm checking for understanding to make sure they watched the video and understand the overall principle. Instead of just having them do the math, I try to show some real world examples in the quiz itself. After they complete the quiz, students complete a lab where they turn on multiple outputs at the same time using Binary decimal values in the robot commands on a real robot.