Instance-Level/Instance-Wide Association of Competencies

Challenge / Theme

Problem Statement

Value Proposition

Flexible, Personalized Content and Competency Alignment

Institutions need to align competencies to existing course structures and to do so at multiple levels of granularity, ranging from the course level to assignments and units. Current workflows available in other LMS’ make it difficult to stay contextually grounded in the course or program while applying competency mappings and assessment criteria.

An instance-level/instance-wide association of competencies to course content with clear hierarchy visualization enables staff to efficiently apply competencies and criteria while staying in the context of familiar course or program organization. This lowers adoption friction, supports both high level and granular mapping approaches, and accelerates competency based delivery using existing course catalogs. This is also a prerequisite to enabling, at a granular level, the ability to track student progress and behavior, and implement targeted engagement strategies via automated interventions or faculty/student support outreach. This in turn further impacts student motivation because they can clearly see how their work and content applies to their learning goals.

Content Reuse and Library Interoperability

Content can move between courses and libraries through import, copy, and reuse. Competency tags and criteria applied in one context can appear in another, creating risk of unintended overrides or inconsistency.

Clear rules for how competency tags behave across courses and libraries, including whether they are editable, locked, or context dependent, preserves data integrity and reduces rework. It also supports future library first authoring workflows without disrupting course based adoption.

Role Based Permissioning and Governance

Many roles may participate in mapping competencies and authoring criteria, including instructional designers, faculty, and administrators. Without permission boundaries, users could accidentally change mappings in courses they should not manage.

Role aware access controls ensure users can only view and edit content they are authorized to manage. This supports institutional governance models and reduces operational risk during large scale adoption. These roles can vary from institution to institution, so there needs to be strong flexibility in adjusting both org level permissions and functional activities.

Auditability and Versioning

Institutions may not frequently change mastery rules, but during initial setup they may need to correct mistakes, compare approaches, and understand what changed over time.

A pragmatic versioning and audit approach supports confidence and recoverability during setup while avoiding unnecessary complexity. It also keeps future options open for stronger publish and version patterns if needed.

Levels of Complexity for Assessments

Institutions need to be able to indicate that competencies can be earned through different combinations of assessments within and across courses. EXAMPLE: Competency: Project Management. Earned by completing Assignment 1 and Assignment 2 from Course 1 OR just Assignment 3 from Course 2. NOTE: This would not be earned by the same student; but instead noting that the Project Mgmt Competency can be found in different courses or programs, and therefore can be validated in different ways.

Institutions need a way to represent that the same competency can be credibly earned and validated through different assessment pathways across courses and programs. In academic environments, competencies may not be confined to a single course or a single assessment model. Instead, they are developed and demonstrated through varied learning experiences that reflect disciplinary context, program design, and learner pathways. This gives curriculum designers and instructors the freedom and agency to individually design their own means for learners to demonstrate a competency, and it gives learners the freedom and agency to partake in a personalized pathway to demonstrate a competency.

Feature

Requirements

Course First Content Selection and Filtering

• Course authors expect to be able to map their competencies

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to begin competency mapping from a Courses tab.

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to search and filter courses using an autocomplete pattern consistent with Studio course search.

Hierarchical Course Content Tree with Expand and Collapse

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to view the course content in the hierarchical format they are used to seeing in Open edX. 

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to expand and collapse each level, including course, assignment or subsection, unit, and supported components.

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to expand or collapse all at selected levels, such as expand or collapse all assignments or expand or collapse all units, to support higher level mapping workflows.

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Apply Competencies and Assessment Criteria at Multiple Levels

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to apply one or more competencies to each supported level of course content (Program Pathway, Course, Gradeable Subsection/Assignment).

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to associate assessment criteria rules to each competency and content association as part of the mapping workflow.

• Course authors & platform administrators should not be able to apply assessment criteria for a competency to contradictory pieces of content (e.g. mastering a competency by passing a whole course and/or mastering it by passing a particular assignment in that course).

Creating a Taxonomy of Competency Type

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to create and edit a structured hierarchy of competencies and associate them to gradable content. 

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to set what organizations (e.g. Unicon University vs Department of Engineering vs a particular course) a competency taxonomy corresponds to such that they can separate their Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs), Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs), and Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs).

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to easily view what organizations a competency taxonomy corresponds to.

• Platform administrators should be able to permit competencies to be reused across courses, programs, and institutions.

Persistent Context When Switching Competencies

• When a course designer selects a competency in the competency tree, the current course filter selection should persist so the user does not need to re-find the same course context.

• Optionally, previously selected assessment criteria rule inputs should persist by default when switching competencies, where this supports faster repeated mapping and does not introduce confusion.

Pathways Tab and Pathway Naming

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to switch from the Courses tab to the Pathways tab on the Competencies page.

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to search and filter pathways using an autocomplete pattern consistent with Studio pathway search.

• The platform administrator should have access to an interface that supports organizational specific naming for pathways, such as “Program”, by reflecting a configurable label.

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to view the pPathway grouping should appear as an additional hierarchy level above courses in the Pathways tab.

Permissions for Viewing and Editing Mappings

• Platform administrators & course authors should be able to view competency mappings and assessment criteria for all courses and content.

•  Platform administrators & course authors should only be able to edit competency mappings and assessment criteria for courses and content that they are permitted to edit.

Course and Library Interoperability Behavior

• If content with competency mappings is copied from a course into a library, the competency tags should carry with the content.

• If content with competency mappings is imported into a library, the competency tags should carry with the content.

• The system should define whether competency tags in libraries are editable, and whether library edits can override or remove tags applied through the competency workflow.

• If library and course tagging workflows both expose tags, the user interface should prevent confusing or unsafe overrides, for example through disabled controls or clear warnings. 

1. Instance-level Admin Taxonomies Page

1. As a staff member, I should not be able to select contradictory levels of granularity of course content when associating competencies and content with assessment criteria.

2. Generic Final Course Grade Assessment Criteria Use Cases

   1. Same as below

3. Generic Gradeable Subsection (Assignment) Assessment Criteria Use Cases

   1. As a staff member, I should be able to create assessment criteria when I associate a competency tag to a subsection (assignment).

   2. As a staff member, I should be able to indicate (with a competency tag assessment criteria for a subsection/assignment) that if the learner earns >, >=, <, <=, or = a particular grade on a subsection (assignment), then they have earned the competency.

   3. As a staff member, I should be able to indicate that if the learner earns >, >=, <, <=, or = a particular grade on an assessment criteria grouping of subsection/assignment A OR on subsection/assignment B OR on subsection/assignment C, etc. then they have earned the competency.

   4. As a staff member, I should be able to indicate that if the learner earns >, >=, <, <=, or = a particular grade on an assessment criteria grouping of subsection/assignment A AND on subsection/assignment B AND on subsection/assignment C, etc. then they have earned the competency.

   5. As a staff member, I should be able to indicate that if the learner achieves assessment criteria group A OR assessment criteria group B OR assessment criteria group C, etc., then they have earned the competency.

   6. As a staff member, I should be able to indicate that if the learner achieves assessment criteria group A AND assessment criteria group B AND assessment criteria group C, etc., then they have earned the competency.

   7. As a staff member, I should be able to include subsections/assignments from each course in its own  assessment criteria group.

4. Generic Gradable Unit Assessment Criteria Use Cases

   1. Same as above

5. Undo/Delete Use Cases

   1. As a staff member, when I click to add assessment criteria to a competency tag, I should only be able to associate units, subsections, and courses for which I have edit permissions.

   2. As a staff member, when I click to delete a competency tag…

      1. Are all assessment criteria associated with this tag deleted as well?

         1. I think the answer to this has to be yes, they would all be soft deleted.

      2. Do all learners who have earned this competency have it deleted from their profile as well?

         1. I suspect that in most cases, the answer to this question would be no. But if that assumption is wrong, maybe we should provide this as an option.

      3. All pieces of content associated with the competency tag should still exist.

   3. As a staff member, when I change the grade threshold for competency evaluation…

      1. Are all learners who previously earned this competency re-evaluated?

         1. Option 1: Do not allow people to change grade thresholds for content in live courses.

         2. Option 2: There should probably be an option for students who have already earned the competency to keep it or for all to be re-evaluated.

      2. Are all learners who have previously attempted this competency but not earned re-evaluated?

         1. Option 1: Do not allow people to change grade thresholds for content in live courses.

         2. Option 2: There should be an option to re-evaluate the competency for prior attempts or to only have the configuration change evaluated from this point forward

   4. As a staff member, when I change what content/course(s) is associated with a competency for evaluation…

      1. Same conditions as for changing grade threshold.

   5. As a staff member, I need to be able to view a log of each learner’s competency assessment criteria demonstration statuses and understand why the status is what it is.

   6. As a staff member, I need to be able to manually indicate that a learner or a group of learners have mastered a particular competency.

PARKING LOT: Drag and Drop Competency Application

• Course authors & platform administrators should be able to apply a competency to content by dragging a competency label and dropping it onto a content node.

• Drag and drop should not require leaving the currently selected competency context.

• The system should prevent duplicate applications and should surface an informative message when a competency is already applied.

PARKING LOT: Visual Indicators of Existing Competency Mappings

• Content nodes should display visible competency badges for competencies already applied.

• Badges should be readable at a glance and should support multiple competencies aligned to a single  content item.

• Users should be able to view additional details for applied mappings without relying only on a secondary information icon.