Integrating competency standards into project work - example from engineering section CPIT

Attended a lunch time session from staff of the engineering/manufacturing section in the Trades Innovation Institute (TII) today. ATheir presentation was a subset of one presented at a the recent Adult Literacy and Numeracy Symposium 2010 held at Unitec in Auckland. John Morgan, Tony Smith, Bernie Streeter, Chris Cato, Rayn Baker and Peter Harrison presented on “Embedding Literacy, Language, & Numeracy into Project based learning” – their M-WAU project.

Basically, the delivery of the 6 months pre-trade engineering courses will be re-structured to remove the current 28 summative assessments and be replaced with completion of projects (I.E. making products).  Enbedded into the projects, will be the various performance criteria required to be completed. Numerary and literacy will also be included in situated learning activities. Assessment then involves completion of the projects which requires a complicated set of spreadsheets to track student progress and match their progress to the competency standards completed. 

Of interest is the way in which marks are allocated to projects, changing a competency based assessment into a 'norm referenced' one based on 'tolerances' achieved by students as they work through various projects.  The marks then appear on a graph which can be linked to affinities students may have to various dispositional aspects of the manufacturing trade identifies in vocational roles (toolmaker, fitter /turner, fabricator, welder etc.)

A worthwhile and well throught through project which will be interesting to follow as delivery begins next year.  As all the material related to course delivery is now available digitally, it will be a good project at some stage to see how mobile technology (ipods, ipads, phones) may be useful for students to access learning materials, revision and self track progress.