1 Competency versus constructive alignment-based approaches to education

Understanding the difference between competency-based and traditional or constructive-based approaches to education is useful. It will help you to develop a foundation from which to implement innovative assessments with greater understanding and certainty.

So, before you begin to contemplate what innovative assessment is and how it could be useful, you must first explore competency and constructive alignment in relation to education.

Figure 1 explains some of the differences between traditional education and competency-based education. For example, you will see that one characteristic of traditional education is that the learner would learn from a text book whereas competency-based education encourages the learner to learn through active research.

Figure 1 Traditional education vs competency-based education