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Competencies Tool

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What is Possible with ICON’s Competencies Tool?

With ICON's Competencies tool, you can allow students to see the progress they are making toward achieving course goals. By creating competencies and learning objectives, and rubrics by which to evaluate them, you can provide qualitative assessment in addition to the quantitative assessments possible in other ICON assessment tools. You can:

  • Define learning objectives—the skills, abilities, or knowledge students must acquire to be considered competent in an area of study.
  • Define the activities—quizzes, presentations, demonstrations, etc.—that will be used to evaluate whether students have met the stated learning objectives.
  • Use Rubrics—criteria graders look for when assessing how successfully a student completes an activity. Define ranges of proficiency and associate with percentage score or text (e.g., "Excellent").
  • Track student progress as they complete the activities and thereby demonstrate they have met the associated learning objectives.
15 July 2008
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Link to Desire2Learn's Documentation

Click here to open the documentation (PDF).

22 August 2007
Competencies
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Competencies

You can use the Competencies tool to manage learning objectives and to evaluate how well the students have met those objectives by completing defined activities.

Definitions:

Competency: A competency is an ability or level of knowledge an instructor would want students to possess (i.e., students will know the plots of Shakespeare's tragedies.). A competency may exist in a nested structure as a part of other competencies.

Learning Objective: A learning objective is a specific goal that students must attain in order to achieve the competency (e.g., Students will be able to identify the plot and major characters in King Lear.) More than one learning objective can be part of a competency (e.g., one objective for each tragedy covered in the course).

Activity: An activity is a quiz, survey, dropbox submission, discussion board post, or grade item the instructor uses to assess whether a student has achieved the learning objective (e.g., a quiz on King Lear). You can use more than one activity to evaluate a learning objective. You must create the quiz, survey, dropbox folders, discussion topics, or grade item before you begin building your Competency.

Adding a Competency

These instructions assume you are using the default Standard View, which gives you the Competency Wizard the first time you use this tool.. If you prefer the Advanced View, which enables you to see "orphans"—learning activities that are not associated with any competencies—you can select it in the Settings area.

  1. If you haven't yet added the Competencies tool to your NavBar, do so now. (See the Online Help section Changing the NavBar.)
  2. If you haven't yet created the quizzes, surveys, dropbox folders, discussion topics, or grade items you're planning on using as Activities, do so now.
  3. Click Competencies in the NavBar.
  4. Click Competency Wizard (top).
  5. Define your Competency (e.g., Students will know the plots of Shakespeare's tragedies).
    1. Enter a name and optional description.
    2. Select Draft from the Status dropdown menu. (Keep the draft status until you're finished editing the competency. Once you mark a competency Approved, it cannot be edited.)
    3. You may wish to leave Make Competency and its children visible to learners and Allow re-evaluation of learners who have achieved this Competency unchecked (the default settings). You can use the competency even if it is not visible to students, and it is not usually necessary to allow re-evaluation of learners.
    4. Click Next.

3. Create Learning Objective 1 (e.g., Students will be able to identify plot of King Lear).

    1. Enter a name and description for the learning objective .
    2. if you want the Learning Objective tied to specific activities in your ICON site, check Yes under Enforce evaluation method. If not, choose No.
    3. If you have already created the activities, choose Yes under Ready for evaluation. If not, choose No.
    4. If you wish to add more Learning Objectives for this Competency, enter a number in the box and click Add Learning Objectives and repeat steps 1-3.
    5. Click Next.

4. Associate the Competency with an Activity (e.g., quiz on King Lear).

    1. Enter the Activity name .
    2. Choose the item you have already created that you want to use for the activity (such as a quiz or a dropbox item) from the dropdown menu.
    3. Select your evaluation type (quiz, dropbox item, etc). This will determine subsequent options. Numeric means a the activity will have a simple points or weighted score; Rubric means it will be evaluated based on a rubric you create. (See Rubrics.)
    4. Choose the achievement threshold: the level students must attain in order to satisfactorily complete the activity (e.g., >80%).
    5. If you wish to add more activities, enter a number in the box and click Add Activities. Then repeat steps 1-4.
    6. Click Next.

5. Create the Competency structure

    1. View the Competency structure you have created.
    2. Click Create to complete the structure.
    3. Click Done. Notice that the status is set to “Draft.” If you are satisfied with your Competency, click the Competency name and change the status to Approved. After this, it can no longer be deleted (this is a safeguard to ensure that student data won't be lost).

Viewing Competency Results

Note: this will only work if a student has completed the all the learning activities associated with your Competency. You may wish to use a test student account to do this. Contact icon-support@uiowa.edu for a test account if you don’t already have one.

  1. Click on Competencies in the Navbar.
  2. Click on View Results in the row containing the competency.
  3. Locate your student; you should see a green checkmark to the right of that student's name.
  4. To see the score and the competency structure, click on the student's name.

Copying Competencies

If you are creating new competencies that resemble existing competencies, you may copy the existing competencies. Create a copy of your existing competency:

  1. Click on Competencies in the NavBar.
  2. Click on Copy.
  3. Select the competency you wish to copy.
  4. Enter a name for the new competency.
  5. Keep the Draft status for now.
  6. Select Copy Competency.
  7. Click Copy .

Linking an Activity to an Existing Learning Objective

If you have already created a learning objective, you may link an activity (quiz, survey, or dropbox folder) to the existing learning objective.

  1. Click on the Activities tab in the quiz, dropbox folder, or survey.
  2. Click the Add button beside Associated Learning Objectives.
  3. On the pop-up screen that appears, select the learning objective(s) and click Insert.
  4. Click Save Activity.
16 July 2008

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