An overall discussion on competencies in Moodle

An overall discussion on competencies in Moodle

by Ramon Ovelar -
Number of replies: 4

Hello,

Managing competency assessment within Moodle would be an interesting feature for our university virtual campus. There are already some degrees  making this kind of assessment (usually using a cloud based spreadsheet) and other degrees are planning to set it up. Therefore, we have been testing how it works and presented to a group of teachers in an online course.

This was our first approach:

  • Competencies are activated and course rating going to learning plans option too
  • Competency frameworks are created at a category (Faculty) and sub-category (degree) level
  • Competency frameworks deal with transversal or cross-disciplinary competencies, such as "public speaking", not specific subject based competencies.
  • Specific roles are created at degree and year level. These "learning plan supervisors" would create learning templates, assign them to cohorts and manage them (what this management means will be specified later). (See here permissions assigned to this role)
  • 1) Teachers assign competencies to their course 2) link them to activities and configure how evidences or ratings will be submitted to their students' learning plans (action triggered upon activity completion) AND/OR 3) rate them using competency breakdown
  • Students can see their progress in their learning plans, teachers don't.
  • Learning supervisors review learning plans, rate competencies when needed (evidences attached, reviews required).
After testing this "rating cycle" we arrive to 2 "sub-approaches", each one having a problem:

Approach A: Teachers rate competencies in the course, whether using upon completion triggered actions or competency breakdown. The drawback here is that normally competencies are rated in more than one subject. Once one teachers rate as competent a student, this appears in student's learning plan.

Approach B: Teachers do not rate, but use others options instead (attach evidence, require revision). But our "Learning Plan Supervisor (LPS)" can't not reach these evidences because she has no rights to get into the courses. It would need to be admin in the category, but it is not a common practice to have a teacher (the one assuming the role of LPS) having right to get into everyone's courses in a particular category.

Maybe there is a better way to organise this, and I will thank any suggestion. On the meantime some solutions that could be developed:
  1. Instead of having a in learning plan with links to evidences in the courses, a copy of every evidence could be stored to a location where LPS has rights to get in (or any other mechanism to solve the problem of LPS not having rights to get into the courses).
  2. Besides being able to rate competencies using the competencies breakdown, it would be interesting that teachers could also attach evidences or send for reviews the work of their classroom's students. This would allow LPS to have rich information about students' performance.
  3. Add some competency rule to competencies that are at the lower in the competency framework. Using a system similar to the competency rule available for upper-level competencies, ratings from different courses would be needed before a student would be rated as competent.

Well, these are my conclusions after testing the Moodle competencies features and exploring approaches for applying them to a university context. I need to keep on talking with teachers using or wishing to use any digital tool to manage transversal competencies assessment, but, right, I wouldn't be able to begin with a pilot project, due to the aforementioned problems.

I would be glad to hear about other approaches or suggestions. I would like to know also if there is a roadmap to develop this feature in upcoming versions. I have seen in the Roadmap page a point stating "Outcomes and competencies - better tracking of what people know", but it would be interesting to be aware of other improvements. 

Best,

Ramón


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In reply to Ramon Ovelar

Re: An overall discussion on competencies in Moodle

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hello and thanks for outlining your thoughts and approach to competencies in your organisation. I appreciate what you say regarding the limitations of teachers and what they can/cannot see with competencies and learning plans. When I first started exploring them I was surprised (as a former classroom teacher) that I did not have total control and visibility over my students' competencies and learning plans, and I had to think again, understanding that competencies and learning plans follow the student around a site into various courses, so one teacher doesn't by default see everything.  I think your Approach A sounds about right and it's what I would do if I were using them in a real situation now. The key is that the students see their learning plan correctly even if individual course teachers don't.

Did you create your category Learning plan supervisor by adapting the site/user Learning plan supervisor  Learning plan viewer roles?

I am not aware of any further work being done on competencies but I recall the Moodle HQ work was done in collaboration with the university of Montréal and you might like to contact them to ask for their experiences as well?

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: An overall discussion on competencies in Moodle

by Ramon Ovelar -

Hello Mary, many thanks for your reply.

I understand that teachers cannot see learning plans, because these plans belong to the user profile and therefore they are out of scope of the course, the teachers' "kingdom". My point is that, if we stay in Approach A, the one you seem to like, when we deal with lowest level competencies in a framwork, a single setting based on condition completion would make our student competent. And this doesn't match what teachers told they do: normally this assessment is based on information from student performance in several courses. I have spoken about this with teachers from many Spanish universities, and this seems to be the "normal practice". That's why I would say that doing something similar to "competency rule", which is available i all parent competency in the framework, to lowest level competencies coulb be great.

Besides this, as I explained in my previous (there was a link to another post where all the permissions settings was explained) I did create special category permissions. In this post I was asking about a little problem, not a overall design thing.

Best,

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In reply to Ramon Ovelar

Re: An overall discussion on competencies in Moodle

by Heikki Wilenius -

(Bumping an old thread.)

Thanks Ramon for sharing your thoughts on this – just started looking into Competencies and this is really interesting. Anybody care to share other experiences in starting to use Moodle Competencies?

By the way, wouldn't one solution to your problem be the use of competency rules in the framework? E. g. three instances of successful "public speaking" competencies equals the compeltion of "accomplished at public speaking" in the competency framework? (This is just thinking aloud based on an initial glance at the documentation.)

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In reply to Heikki Wilenius

Re: An overall discussion on competencies in Moodle

by Shirley Gregorczyk -
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The current options for the Competency Rule does not have the flexibility most organizations require.

If the competencies are not children you cannot use Competency Rule. Unlucky me, I did not know processes would be realigned to other business units and I cannot move the competency structures (Catalogs), like the Course Catalogs.

Competencies are created, but cannot be retired, replaced or made to be equivalent to other competencies.

Once a Competency is earned by a student, an instructor/teacher or even Admin. cannot change the proficiency without remove the entire "earned" competency from the student's learning plan.

Cannot "mass" add a competency to multiple learning plans with a few clicks. If a competency is required for all personnel, if must be added to each learning plan, one-by-one.

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