CBExchange 2022 Closing: Get in the Game

From competency-based introductory courses to specific CBE programs on campuses, presenters have shared struggles, successes, and best practices at CBExchange 2022. So, what’s next?

To close out this year’s CBExchange, C-BEN President Charla Long and Executive Vice President Dr. Amber Garrison Duncan took the field to coach attendees through key next steps.

First, Long encouraged attendees to build on the momentum of CBExchange right away. Long implored:

“On your journey home, resist the in-flight nap and craft a message to your team with key takeaways from the conference. Then, during your first week back, host a debrief with your team to share your perspective on CBE.”

Long also reinforced a key takeaway reiterated throughout the conference: invest in and communicate with CBE champions. She pushed participants to assemble a leadership team to guide the development of CBE at their institutions:

“Typically, in the higher education context, the leadership team consists of senior representatives from student services, the registrar office, financial aid, information technology, and academic affairs. Empower these CBE champions with the authority and resources needed to advance the effort.”

As attendees take CBE to their campuses, it is important to visualize victory, determining what a CBE win looks like at individual institutions. CBE advocates must explicitly state what they want CBE to achieve. Helpful for visualization is finding gaps in current academic and student service models on campuses that CBE can address and evaluating the institution’s strengths, capabilities, and capacities.

Garrison Duncan explained the specific CBE teams institutions should create. She shared:

“It’s helpful to create four special teams to each address tasks related to curriculum, student services, business systems, and information technology. Populate these teams with people who have a can-do attitude, and provide a structure for their work so they remain focused on the bigger picture.”

Bringing the special teams together frequently with the leadership team will help keep people on track.

Long reminded attendees to use their network as they develop CBE programs at their institutions:

“You have just spent three — in some cases, five — days meeting top CBE leaders from across the country and around the globe. Follow up on networking introductions made here and take time to learn from your peers.”

Attendees should craft a comprehensive professional development plan and offer meaningful opportunities for faculty and staff to learn more about CBE. Long encouraged CBE champions to mirror the competency-based approach by providing coaching and one-on-one supports to those building CBE programs, including taking guidance from the newly announced CompententU, hosted by C-BEN.

Last, C-BEN leadership underscored the center of this work and the main stakeholder for CBE efforts: Learners. Long shared:

“All of this work is for them, so we must take time to understand the learners we hope to serve with a CBE model.”

She suggested hosting focus groups to learn more about their aspirations and challenges and creating representative learner personas to determine the best way to support learners throughout the student lifecycle.

With so much content, attendees are already looking forward to next year. To close out, Long announced CBExchange 2023, taking place at the Omni Resort in Amelia Island on October 3–6, 2023.

Thanks for following along for CBExchange 2022.