Attending To Competency Based Education: New Challenge For E-Learning, Pitfalls And Possibilities

In recent years, a move from a focus on mere skills based education towards a more comprehensive competencies-based one has emerged from kindergarten to medical school in many jurisdictions. Along with this shift to these more complex 21st Century goals comes a substantial challenge for those working to develop effective e-learning environments: How to move beyond a somewhat atomized, behaviourist approach to take account of this new "deep learning" focus for teaching and learning? The paper outlines the US National Research Council's framework of cognitive, interpersonal and intrapersonal competency sets as a framework that is useful for e-learning designers planning to address 21 Century learning goals. The paper then reviews several promises and pitfalls of specific design applications in relation to addressing aspects of teaching one of the competencies-critical thinking (CT). A CT pedagogical framework involving approaches to problematizing content knowledge, use of criteria to make "good" judgements, as well as concepts, strategies and habits of mind supporting CT are outlined in relation to several instructional design related development projects supporting competent thinking. While recognizing the general promise of e-learning environments to support deep learning the paper encourages a techno-skeptical approach paying close attention to pitfalls.