CBL Learnings from Previous Challenges

Since 2010 Universidad Privada del Norte (UPN) educative model is based on competencies and it considers three perspectives, which are interrelated:

• The educator as a facilitator of the students learning: He or she guides students in order to develop their potential and provides tools for their learning.
• The student as manager of their own learning: He or she explores, experiments, builds, re-builds and re-learns.
• The curriculum as an interactive map which allows to reach the graduate profile, depending on the achievement of competencies.

My experience at UPN was implementing Competency Based-Learning (CBL) at Business School co-leading a team in two campuses: Cajamarca and Trujillo. The key points of the implementation were:

• UPN provided training to academic directors in order to understand and adopt the philosophy and methodology of BCL in the following subjects: 1) What is a CBL curriculum, 2) How to develop competencies at CBL for careers, 3) How to develop competencies for majors and how to make the inter-relationships between them and with general competencies for careers; and 4) How to develop competencies for learning sessions and how to make the inter-relationships between them and with the majors’ competencies.
• As team co-leader, I was in charge to replicate the training with my team (teachers and administrates).
• In parallel with training we implemented a plan preparing documentation for each level of CBL curriculum: 1) Career general competencies, 2) Majors’ competencies; and 3) Sessions learning’ competencies.
• After that, we make peer review of every level of CBL curriculum we developed, and make the necessary adjustments that feedback identified.
• We prepared an academic plan which systematized the proposal for changing curriculum in order to make presentations applying for approval of Faculty Dean and Academic Vice President.
• After approval, the main challenge was implementing CBL curriculum at the whole, and make follow up based on objective result indicators.

My co-leader and team successfully implemented CBL curriculum, and as a result, we were recognized but UPN. Nevertheless, the main recognition came from the students, who were able to demonstrate their learning advance based on objective assessment from educators.