A Review of Competency Based Education (CBE)

Abstract

Competency-Based Education (CBE) has been gaining popularity in the past few years, this is mainly because of changing environment of higher education. The change can be in the Learning Management System (LMS) used for offering courses or the approach used for offering courses or programs as a whole. Traditional approach to teaching and learning may still be used by most of the academic institution but others are not afraid of thinking outside the box and trying different approaches to offering courses and/or programs to their students. However, little research has been reported on some of the areas associated with Competency-Based Education (CBE) although it is claimed that CBE improves the match between educational performance and employment opportunities, thus can be more attractive for prospective students. In this survey paper, CBE definition, literature review to identify background work and some important characteristics of this model are presented. Although there are still some challenges with respect to CBE, the opportunities for improvement in higher education exist. Thus, transitioning from traditional module to a Competency-Based Education will have a significant positive impact on higher education in the future. In addition, this paper also discusses the challenges that academic institution may face in implementing Competency-Based Education as well as proposes future research directions in the area.