A mardeep Kahlon was teaching computer science in one of the nation’s hottest technology hubs. Local employers would often tell the Austin Community College professor that they couldn’t find enough qualified workers. Meanwhile, students struggling to balance jobs and classwork were dropping out of programs that promised bright futures.
Making matters worse, the competition for students was intensifying. Students were gaining credit for MOOCs and other free online courses that allowed them to burnish their résumés without quitting their jobs.
How was a community-college computer-science program to keep up?
Ms. Kahlon has done it with an intense focus on online, competency-based courses that allow students to progress at their own pace but don’t let them get ahead of themselves. While many professors use competency-based approaches, hers is distinctive because of how she has tailored her teaching to individual learning styles with a method she calls “read it, watch it, do it.” After consulting with industry professionals, she has used it to train, and learn from, scholars in a variety of disciplines.
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“Amardeep is one of those people who’s innovative and curious, and changes her course almost every semester based on what she’s learning,” says Linda Smarzik, dean of computer science and computer information systems.
“She creates her own videos to help students learn a hot topic” and adjusts her teaching to reach students who learn best by seeing, hearing, or directly applying a concept, the dean adds.
The projects appeal to students. Patricia Schutter, who took an introductory course in Python programming last year, says her favorite lab involved a fictional band, the BobbleHeads, performing at Austin’s annual South by Southwest Music Festival. She created a program to determine how the band fared financially by plugging in its costs for flying, checking extra baggage, renting a house through Airbnb, and so on. She also factored in the band’s honorarium and proceeds from T-shirt and tote-bag sales.
“The labs were so much more creative than what you’d get out of a textbook,” says Ms. Schutter, 23.
Since the shift to competency-based learning, which Ms. Kahlon has promoted since 2014, Austin’s department of computer science and computer-information technology has more than doubled the number of associate degrees and certificates it awards, to 194 and 164, respectively.
Her department’s work accelerated with a $2.3-million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to transform 25 courses to online, competency-based formats. The self-paced classes were designed for returning veterans, the underemployed, and recently laid-off workers, and created a system of stackable credentials that can lead to a degree.
The need to bridge the employment gap in one of the nation’s major tech hubs was clear: “The first thing we saw was the knowledge gap between what employers wanted and colleges were offering,” says the professor, who also trains educators statewide in competency-based approaches.
I t’s not just a local problem. By 2020, the information-technology field is expected to face a shortage of hundreds of thousands of workers, Ms. Kahlon says. Meanwhile, students with valuable work skills and half-finished degrees are taking out loans, cutting back on work, and starting over in degree programs.
The challenge for colleges like Austin: “What can we do to allow students to leverage their prior learning and get some credit for it?” Ms. Kahlon says.
She and an instructional designer, Nighua Han, brainstormed how students learn — some by reading, others by watching or doing something. “What if you combined all three — wouldn’t that make it more powerful?” Ms. Kahlon asked.
With degrees in English, mass communications, computer science, and educational administration, she is comfortable reaching across disciplines and helping instructors transform lessons. Take the Gettysburg Address: An instructor might ask a class to read it, watch a short video, and create a skit or podcast that suggests what it would have been like to actually witness the speech. A presenting student’s competency could be measured according to the sophistication of his or her understanding. Someone who analyzed the event and drew parallels with current events, for example, might earn an A.
Ms. Kahlon divides her online computer-programming course into six modules. Students progress at their own rate but cannot move from one module to the next until they pass a proctored test on the campus and write, in a journal, what they learned and what is still confusing.
Ms. Kahlon is helping expand competency-based learning statewide as director of Fast Track to Success, a program supported by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. She also works with South Texas College to create accelerated pathways to an affordable bachelor’s-degree in computer science and applied technologies.
In her own course, when students are stuck, she may share her screen with theirs through Adobe Connect and walk them through the problem. Or she may record a two-minute lecture and send it to them.
“I tell them in the beginning that I’m only successful if you are successful,” she says. “We’re in this together.”
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
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