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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
So the whole idea of I need to make education feel good for me as the educator has to begin to shift. And, that's where CBE does become an effective tool for kids who really, really do want to learn and for adults who really, really do want to learn.
Narrator:This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Jared:Welcome to the Transform Your Teaching podcast on the campus of Cedarville University. My name is Jared Pyles, and with me is Dr. Rob McDole. I am coming to you live from my basement outside Columbus. We're recording this on a different day than we normally do. So if it sounds different, that's probably why.
Jared:And because I'm not physically there in the studio, I'm going to throw it to Rob to introduce our esteemed guest as we continue our series on competency based education. Rob, it's your turn.
Rob:Thanks, Jared. And today, we have in the studio my wife, Virginia McDole, known as Genny. And Genny, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, your educational background, and how you got into teaching?
Genny McDole:Oh, okay. So Rob and I met here at Cedarville back in 1994, and I was a Spanish education major by the time we graduated. So we moved around the country quite a bit. We've been blessed with four kids, and I've had give or take twenty two years of educational experience in the homeschool setting, public school, Christian school, online school, and dabbling with higher ed. So education experience is pretty varied.
Genny McDole:I did my master's degree through WGU, Western Governors University, and
Rob:yeah. And that's why we're talking to her today because she is a WGU grad Yes. With a competency based education program.
Genny McDole:And that has enabled me to be able to teach every single grade level. I have taught kindergarten through twelfth grade and higher education. So kinda seen it all on about every platform there is.
Rob:And specifically, you teach?
Genny McDole:Spanish to high school students, particularly right now, one and Spanish two in the face to face class setting, also Hispanic cultures class, and I also teach online Spanish one, two, and three with a different school in the evenings in addition to what I do during the day.
Rob:So you're busy? Just a little bit. Yeah.
Jared:What drew you to competency based?
Genny McDole:Well, that particular season of life was interesting. We had just moved, and we had four teenagers. We were trying to acclimate to a new place. It was a new season of life. And I needed to get my teacher's license updated here in the state of Ohio.
Genny McDole:And the easiest way to do that was just to go ahead and do a master's degree. And Western Governors offered a program that was competency based. So that meant I was paying for time instead of courses. And I knew that I already knew a lot of the material, so I could go ahead and do it as quickly as I could. So it fit the bill for time, and it also fit the bill financially as well because it didn't cost very much.
Rob:So you're a graduate of Cedarville. Correct. 1998 with me.
Genny McDole:Yes.
Rob:You remember that process. You remember everything. How would you compare that, you know, pluses and negatives? How would you compare that to your experience with WGU?
Genny McDole:Well, I'm very, very thankful for my degree and experience at Cedarville as an undergrad, so I definitely would not undervalue that or say that I wish that I had WGU as undergrad because that's not the case. And, certainly, it was a wonderful experience, and we met. So Yeah. So that makes it great.
Jared:Gross. Leave it leave it.
Rob:We're gonna edit it out. Don't worry.
Jared:Take this out of the podcast.
Genny McDole:Let's get this. My first experience actually with competency based education was as a student. I was in doctor Tim Heaton's class, philosophy of ed. And we had to write many, many, many papers in that class, and he refused to just hand a grade over to the student. We had to meet rubric proficiencies on that paper.
Genny McDole:And that was my first experience with that whole concept. And I was so frustrated. I think I rewrote that paper four or five times. I could not understand why he would not just give me a grade. Like I was willing to take the low grade if necessary, but he was not willing to just let me get by.
Genny McDole:And now I'm so thankful for that. So in terms of comparing contrasting what Cedarville offers as, you know, quality Christian education can't be compared. However, it was at the time we were on quarters. Now we've transitioned into semesters here on campus. It was grade based.
Genny McDole:We took multiple courses at a time. You could not pass a course until the end of the semester. And so that was frustrating, obviously. Contrast that with WGU, where you could take as many courses as you could within a semester, and they would frame a semester as a six month period. And you could just get through the content.
Genny McDole:The content was all readily available. You did not have to wait until the next class period for the professor to reveal the next level of content or to reveal the next assessment. Everything was there, easily laid out, and it could be moved through quickly and efficiently.
Rob:So did you ever have to get help from another or from a content expert where you didn't understand something and it really wasn't there in the resources or in the readings and you were just stuck? I did. What was that like?
Genny McDole:So every student was assigned a student mentor from day one, and that student mentor was someone who had the same degree and had experience in the field as well. So my student mentor was I think her name was Michelle, and she lived in Florida and she had the same degree. She had many years of teaching experience and she had chosen to leave the field and do this exclusively just to work with online master students. So she was always my first point of contact. Most of the time she was so familiar with the content and the courses that she could answer the questions.
Genny McDole:If she couldn't, then she would refer it to what would be the course designer or the professor. And with there, again, twenty four hour feedback immediately. And most of the time it was within, I would say probably more like five or six hours, but not long at all. But I think honestly, I really only had to do that once or twice because the courses were so well designed and everything was so well communicated that as long as I paid attention and read the content material, it was all there.
Rob:So it seems like they actually modeled what they were training you to do.
Genny McDole:They really did. It was a very effective program.
Jared:So we we've had Nate Brock on, and he works at WGU. And he was mentioning they have quite the amount of graders. They have a huge pool to to pull from. So that's incredible that you could get feedback within two to three hours on an assignment. That's, like, unheard of.
Genny McDole:Yeah.
Jared:I'm wondering, though, if you were to take some of the competency base into your own teaching as a Spanish teacher, what kind of turnaround time realistically do you think you could do for a competency based?
Genny McDole:So realistically, as the content expert and the one who's evaluating all of the assessments that are turned in. Well, first of all, in the current model of the way we do classroom education, where grades are assigned and we do either direct instruction or even PBL, problem based learning, No matter what form of instruction there is, the assessment is really based on, okay, I've got a scope and sequence. I've got one to two weeks to cover this particular content. Then there's going be an assessment and a grade's going to be assigned to that. With the CBE model, really, you kind of have to throw that out the window if you're going to have that immediate turnaround and feedback the way you're describing.
Genny McDole:You really would have to have the course completely designed with all of its resources ahead of time. So instructional videos or links of different kinds and certainly the textbooks, assignments, everything to get that content out there. And then students would end up working at different paces. So then you don't become the one who's directing everything. The course itself is directing itself.
Genny McDole:So you become more like the monitor, so you have more time to grade because you're not doing the direct instruction. It's already done.
Rob:So it sounds like flipped, Jared.
Genny McDole:It is. It very much is a flipped model.
Jared:It it does sound like flipped, but, you know, me being I'm still on the fence. I don't I don't know. By the end of the series, maybe I'll be one way or the other. So here's a question I could ask you, Genny, and you can maybe shed some light on this for me. I am all for competency based when it comes to objective stuff.
Jared:Right? Like, for example, if you're teaching Spanish and you've got vocab terms and you've got conjugate this verb in first person, second person, third person, and make sure you have the correct ending on the end of those verbs. That is an objective yes or no. But when it comes to the subjective pieces, this is where when it comes to higher level on, Bloom's, I'm struggling a bit with how competency will fit best because I feel like there needs to be more, not handholding, but scaffolding when it comes to that upper level stuff. Maybe you can help shed some light on that for me.
Genny McDole:So I think what I'm hearing you say is that in a higher education setting, in courses where there's more discussion oriented assessments, both in class and written?
Jared:Not necessarily discussion. Just more of analyzing synthesis where it's not necessarily truly black and white.
Genny McDole:Sure. So how do you assess it now?
Jared:You put me on the spot because this is exactly how Rob did when I when we did our other episode.
Genny McDole:I'm sorry. We've been together a long time.
Jared:And here here's exactly what I said to him, and you're gonna say the same thing back to me. Well, I used a rubric.
Genny McDole:Yeah. How generic was your rubric? How detailed was your rubric?
Jared:Oh, my rubrics are fantastic. Are you questioning my rubric right now? Okay.
Genny McDole:I you know, I've never seen your rubrics, Jared, so I have no idea. So I'm not gonna question...
Jared:My rubrics are incredible.
Genny McDole:Gonna question the validity of your rubrics. What I will say is that grading is subjective depending upon our mood.
Jared:Yeah. Very often. I agree.
Genny McDole:And blood sugar and how much sleep
Rob:you've had.
Jared:This this is I'm talking to Rob
Genny McDole:right now. I'm sorry.
Jared:Rob talks about it. It's all about mood. It's all about
Genny McDole:It really is, though.
Jared:How much sleep you've had.
Genny McDole:And I agree. And when you take the time, and it does take time, and it's sometimes really unbelievably annoying to develop these detailed rubrics, it really helps you be as objective as possible. And you're right. In those kinds of situations that you described, if you don't have objectivity in the assessment form, then it really ruins the whole thing. You have to be able to do that.
Genny McDole:And I will say WG did that extremely well, and just making those rubrics extremely detailed.
Jared:I'm trying. But it's also there's a disconnect for me. If I'm teaching, I feel like I also have to grade something that's subjective. I mean, I can do a extremely detailed rubric, but if I hand that rubric off to someone else and they grade it, they're still going to I can be as black and white as humanly possible, but to me, there's still some subjectivity there. I feel like I lose an element of control.
Jared:And I've I've said before in this series that it could be my ego getting in the way, but I feel like I have to be a part of the process as an educator when I'm assessing whether or not when Atticus shot the rabbit dog in the street in To Kill a Mockingbird, it's not just because he shot the rabbit dog. There's more to it. There's connections, themes in the entire book, and I feel like I can't let someone else assess that. I feel like that's my responsibility as the content delivery dude.
Genny McDole:Sure. And I those points that you just mentioned, I think still could be done adequately within a rubric, so maybe we should do a whole session on that. But
Jared:I'm all for it.
Genny McDole:You really did hit a hit a big point there personality and the control aspect of those kinds of things. And I have shared the similar situation with you where I feel like, well, if I don't do it a certain way, then the students haven't learned. How will I know that they've learned? Because I feel like that I have to have that tangible, what to me feels tangible, personal connection with them and this vibe, if you will, or whatever, where I have to feel like that everything's okay. When you remove that need for control and sometimes it's not necessarily a bad thing.
Genny McDole:But I think perhaps sometimes we have to do, you know, some talking with the Lord and saying, Lord, what really what really is the issue here? What what is the issue with me? Is this a valid thing? Or do I have a control issue? I'm not going to judge you on that because And I will say, in your defense, I do believe that there are some areas, I think, that are harder with CBE than others.
Genny McDole:I think literature analysis would be one of those. Think that if I was taking or teaching a Spanish literature course, oh, good heavens, that would be very difficult to do CBE. Think I was a piano performance major before I was a Spanish major. I think doing CBE with a final piano capstone performance would be very difficult because of the subjectivity. So I don't disagree with you in that element of it.
Genny McDole:I think it still can be done. It would take a lot of front end work with absolute clarity of all stakeholders of what the end goal was. The backward design model just cannot be mistaken. But really, truly for any successful CBE program, there has to be intrinsic motivation on the part of the learner.
Genny McDole:Absolutely. Because if you don't have some form of intrinsic motivation, or if you're in the K-twelve aspect of things or realm, perhaps parents or guardians who are giving extrinsic motivation, whatever that involves. If you don't have a learner who's motivated to do it, then you're right. You have to do a lot of handholding, and that's frustrating. But student apathy is probably our biggest vice, if you will, to the whole thing.
Genny McDole:And then stakeholder buy in and making sure that everybody understands really what this is. What are we talking about? And the value of replacing a letter grade that's equivalent with a certain period of time that you sat in the classroom for six months and you turned in a few assignments, so therefore you get your C versus no, you're going to perform. You're going to demonstrate that you're able to actually do these skills.
Rob:Moving on here in terms of what advantages I mean, you've kind of talked to some of them from your perspective as a student. You talked about advantages of being able to go at your own pace. I think you've talked about some disadvantages. You know, you need to have the time.
Genny McDole:Mhmm. For sure.
Rob:Are there any other advantages or disadvantages that you see from your perspective as a student or maybe even as K through 12, even though I know we've probably talked about some of those already?
Genny McDole:I think the biggest advantage, honestly, is like I said, just being able to move at your own pace, particularly as the adult learner. Disadvantage would be, I think, Jared, I've heard you talk about concern over moving too fast. So that is genuinely concerned. And we have that issue with some of our online students where we say, You can go fast, but you can't go this fast. So we do have markers on them, and I'm talking about the online program that I work with in the evenings.
Genny McDole:So a disadvantage would be that you're not really retaining. However, in the case of like WGU, where you cannot take multiple courses at one time, you have to pass the proficiencies of one course before you can move on to the next one. Because they're built on each other as opposed to you taking all of them at the same time, you have to retain that. Otherwise, you're not going to do well on the next one. I can see that that would be really incredible in math courses, some science courses.
Genny McDole:I think the nursing program certainly is already doing some of that. You have to pass those standards and those different skill levels in order to be able to move on to the next thing. And most certainly within world languages, that's extremely advantageous. I think it would be a challenge as you expressed in some of your discussion areas, things that would be, you know, more relational, more discussion based in your literature classes. It's still very doable, but it would take creativity and a lot of very detailed back end work.
Genny McDole:So the time factor definitely has to be taken into consideration. But honestly, the more you can get everyone to just understand the value of performance over a grade and of unnecessary wasted time in the classroom as being equated with quality. Time in a classroom is not quality. It's just time in a classroom. It is what it may be.
Genny McDole:It's quality, but a lot of times it's not. A lot of times it could be replaced. And learning just how the whole process of devaluing or just not valuing what previous knowledge and experience is worth. It's worth a lot. So learning to place value on that.
Genny McDole:And in the case of my experience with WGU, that really came into play because a lot of the content in those courses, I already knew. I'd been in the field long enough. And so the value of what I already knew was put into play. And so getting people to kinda overcome those hurdles and just being willing to accept that there is a different model.
Jared:So you hit on that in your last answer, Genny, and I wanna bring it up a bit. The online community part to me is concerning in a CBE environment when you're by yourself. I mean, I mean, I've done a lot of readings and coursework for my doctorate on online education, and one of the biggest contributing factors to success in an online course for a student is the community, is the relationship between instructor and student and student to student. And that seem you've mentioned instructor to student as far as you have a grader or someone who's helping you through it, a facilitator to help you through it, but you haven't mentioned any student to student interaction.
Genny McDole:Sure.
Jared:And that that that to me is a concern.
Genny McDole:Well, in a classroom setting, so, like, just making it practical with my nine through 12, for example, I still have to be physically in the building. The students physically still have to be in the building. So until those kinds of requirements are left, that interaction is available. It's there. In some of my online situations, we actually do have some Christian schools that are using the program.
Genny McDole:Instead of a teacher, they'll just have a classroom monitor so the students are still working together. So some of that gets taken care of in that aspect. My experience with WGU, though, was extremely positive with my student mentor. She was about my age. She had just gone through the program a couple of years before.
Genny McDole:And so in a lot of ways, she was a peer professionally. Were we in the same classes together? No. She was definitely a mentor in that aspect, but she understood what I was going through. That peer element of learning together was missing.
Genny McDole:And in my particular area, that was not really needed, but I can see how it would be in other areas.
Jared:Maybe I'm just very much a constructivist when it comes to learning and thinking about your involvement individually with the content is a huge factor in you understanding and learning and applying the content. Yeah. Your interaction with the instructor is as well. But there's also a part of it that is the student to student interaction, the discussions, the collaboration that may not be the driving force that solidifies or cements the learning process, the change that lasts. Right?
Jared:But it certainly doesn't hurt, and it can hone, and it can fine tune. Because I didn't I didn't truly understand some stuff until I was in a discussion, and I bounced my ideas off of others, and they were like, wow, that's really good. Absolutely. Sure. So, like and that's completely lost in a CBE environment.
Genny McDole:So I wanna validate what you're saying, Jared, but I also wanna give a different perspective, and that is that we as educators like to define and quantify education based on somewhat of our own experience and our own personal personal, you know, our personalities and our biases. But I will tell you that the number of kids that I see now that are coming from situations where school and education are not the defining factors in their lives, that number of kids is growing exponentially. So in other words, there's not when we think about education as a whole, we imagine the traditional setting where a kid gets up in the morning. Right now I'm referring to a K-twelve aspect, but it can even filter over to, you know, undergrad ages. Kid gets up in the morning.
Genny McDole:There is food. There's a warm home. There are clean clothes. Someone makes sure that that child gets to school. They leave a home that is safe.
Genny McDole:They leave a home where no one's screaming and yelling, that there are no threats. They come to a safe school environment, and they go home to a safe environment. They don't have to worry about extenuating circumstances in their lives. The number of kids now that have that privilege is so low. And so school is far outranked by survival.
Genny McDole:And when we understand what we're dealing with and understand that we have a lot of kids who really do want to learn and that we have a responsibility in some ways to make education accessible for them when they can do it. If we if, for example, if we're putting everything online, whether it's Google Classroom or Canvas or whatever, and those students go home and they have to complete work, but there's no Wi-Fi because the parents didn't have money to pay the Wi-Fi bill. Or in a split custody situation, they didn't have their computer because the stepmom took the car and the computer got left in the car. And the story just goes on and on and on. So we have to be able to design courses and content and then assessments that are fair, that are balanced, that are accurate, and that can be accessed when the student is able to access it, when they're in a safe environment, when they're able to study, when the Wi-Fi is turned on, all the different aspects of it.
Genny McDole:So the whole idea of I need to make education feel good for me as the educator has to begin to shift. It has to. And because our culture has shifted and it's not fair and it's not cool and it's not fun, but it's what is. And that's where CBE does become an effective tool for kids who really, really do wanna learn and for adults who really, really do wanna learn.
Rob:Sounds like servant teaching as well, what I'm hearing there.
Jared:Well, Genny, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. You have challenged me. You have made me question everything I believe about CBE, and you've also convinced me that you should be the cohost, and we should get rid of Rob. So...
Genny McDole:You're very kind, Jared.
Jared:Rob, you're fired. Genny, you're hired.
Rob:Wait a minute. Don't I have to fire me? No. Oh, oh, okay.
Jared:It's different. You know, you are my you you're you're my boss in other buildings on this campus.
Rob:But not when we're recording in a microphone. When we're recording. Alright.
Jared:I don't know if you knew, though. That was on the contract.
Rob:Thanks for the clarification.
Genny McDole:Well, it's been an honor and a pleasure to be included.
Jared:That's gonna do it for us today on the Transform Your Teaching podcast. Be sure to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog, or send us an email if you have questions. CTLPodcast@Cedarville.edu. And, of course, as we've been talking about, join us on Flip to talk about competency based education and to see if you agree with Genny or you agree with me on this very important topic.
Jared:Thanks so much for listening.