Knowledge Base

SLCC has created the Competency-Based Education (CBE) Teacher Credential (CBETC) for  faculty who are committed to facilitating a robust and engaging competency-based learning experience in CBE courses.

The Department of Education (DoE) mandates that all online courses at Title IV higher education institutions must have "regular and substantive interaction between students and instructors" in order for their students to qualify for financial aid. This requirement applies to CBE courses. CBE courses cannot be “correspondence courses” or “self-study courses.” The DoE and most accrediting bodies want proof that CBE instructors are adequately trained to meet these requirements. The purpose of the CBE Teacher Credential is to ensure our CBE instructors know how to maintain an active presence in their CBE courses, engage regularly with their students, and effectively manage the self-paced, independent, revision-based learning approach that is central to competency-based education.

The CBE Teacher Credential should be completed by any faculty, full-time and adjunct, who will teach a CBE course. Check with your Associate Dean to determine if the CBE Teacher Credential is right for you.

While we strongly encourage the course, it is not required. Best practices and expectations for CBE teachers continue to evolve, and technology changes often. Even veteran CBE instructors will learn something new in this course and develop resources to help facilitate their CBE courses. Veteran CBE faculty also play an important role as mentors to novice participants in the course, answering questions and sharing their experiences and examples with their colleagues.

Faculty should earn the CBE teacher credential before teaching a CBE course. If you are already actively teaching CBE courses, the credential should be earned before starting your next term.

The learning activities and assessments in the CBE Teacher Credential course will help you demonstrate your achievement of the following course competencies: 

The CBE Teacher Credential is offered as an open-enrollment course, meaning you can start the course at any time.

The CBE Teacher Credential is offered in a CBE format, so how long it takes to complete depends on your prior knowledge. For someone new to CBE, it can take around 3 hours per module and there are 5 modules. For someone with more experience with the competencies, it might only take 1-2 hours per module.

The CBE Teacher Credential course is offered in a CBE format to help faculty get the experience of learning in a CBE format. The course is self-paced with optional learning activities. The only work that counts toward your grade are the required summative assessments in each module. Faculty must earn competency on all of the learning objectives to successfully complete the course.

The CBETC is taught by the CBE Program Manager who has online CBE teaching experience.

The CBE Teacher Credential is not a Canvas tutorial. Before taking this course, you must be proficient in the following tasks in Canvas.

In 2015, the School of Applied Technology developed a CBE Faculty Credential to help faculty understand the philosophy of CBE and design and teach in the CBE model.

In 2018, a general CBE Faculty Credential was developed to help faculty teaching credit-based CBE courses understand the philosophy of CBE and design and teach in the CBE model.

Both of these courses focused mostly on how to design an effective CBE course and included critical elements like how to write an effective competency and learning objectives, how to map a course to current SLOs, and how to design effective learning activities and assessments for the CBE model. Due to the heavy emphasis on course design for CBE, an additional credential was deemed necessary to support those who will facilitate CBE courses and may or may not be involved in the CBE course design process.

This CBE Teacher Credential focuses solely on how to effectively teach a CBE course. It explores things like how to orient students to the class, provide effective feedback, track student progress, and develop effective just-in-time resources while teaching the course. The course was created and piloted in 2020. 10 General Education faculty took the first version of the CBE Teacher Credential and provided input on how to revise the course to best support SLCC faculty. The next step will be to receive input from Biotech and SAT faculty to make sure that it addresses faculty needs across all CBE modalities at SLCC.

Yes. The training is entirely online, though there are opportunities for synchronous meetings where faculty can connect and discuss ideas and challenges associated with teaching CBE courses. You can complete the course as quickly or slowly as you need to as long as you finish before the term that you will be teaching a CBE course. The content in the course will help you prepare your CBE course, so it may help to do the course at the same time that you are prepping your courses for the term.

The Faculty Development office compensates adjunct faculty for 12 hours of work after completing the CBE Teacher Credential course. Adjunct faculty may spend more or less than 12 hours in the course, but the compensation does not change.

Register for the course using SLCC's training registration system, located on the Employee tab in MySLCC. From the list of courses, look for course code DCBT. Adjunct faculty must have the approval of their associate dean to participate in the course. If you have questions, please email Emily Thompson, the CBE Program Manager at emily.thompson@slcc.edu.