Co-design innovative solutions for your students with a design thinking approach to competency-based education
The Open Way Learning (OWL) CBE Accelerator, powered by LiFT
Every learning community has the capacity for authentic innovation. We help schools use Open Design to radically improve the relevance and meaning of the teaching and learning environment in schools.
The OWL CBE Accelerator helps you co-design innovations that leverage your local assets to meet student and community goals, while introducing you to CBE experts, resources, and networks as inspiration
Image: Stanford d.school streamlined design process (Legacy, circa 2012)
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Our accelerators help you create capacity and sustainability through intentional support of instructional practice, policy, and cultural shifts.
Target Key Components of Competency-based Education
Competencies
Academic goals and personal success skills that are measurable, rigorous, and transferable
Personal Success Skills
Life skills often explicitly referenced in a school, district, or state Portrait of a Graduate (POG).
Performance Assessments
Dynamic assessments rooted in a transparent feedback cycle that measure how well a student transfers knowledge and integrates complex skills.
Learning Pathways
Descriptions of how students will develop and demonstrate enduring understanding over time with flexible pacing of learning.
Evidence-Based Grading
Scoring and reporting based on a portfolio of artifacts that reflects progress or development of competencies.
Embrace your unique CBE journey with LiFT Learning.
Our experienced facilitators will guide you every step of the way, whether you're just starting out or seeking to refine your current approach. From exploration to design and refinement, we'll work together to create a personalized model that addresses your specific 'problem of practice'.
Choose to Focus on What Matters Most
During 1 hour weekly sessions, you and your team will gain personalized support and resources within a small cohort of like-minded leaders and educators walking away inspired, energized, and informed with a clear and attainable plan of action.
Customize your Accelerator or use our foundations journey template
Empathize
Connect with your primary learners first to understand their current experience. Establish a current status using empathy and user journey maps.
Dream up a future vision to build the creative tension necessary to lead sustainable change designed to make a specific impact.
With observations and assumptions clarified, go back into the field to confirm what you know about your students’ perceived experiences.
Define
Leading with more certainty from your empathy, you can define the problem to avoid jumping straight to solutions.
Develop a critical lens with How Might We? and Point of View statements that reveal the possibilities and challenges your learners closest to the problem need.
Review the criteria and characteristics of competency-based learning to clarify the opportunities and constraints of the problem statements.
Ideate & Skateboard Prototype
First, brainstorm all the potential solutions possible for your innovation as well as seemingly impossible.
Critically analyze what’s imaginable to prioritize the most feasible and impactful solutions for your team to pursue.
Build a Minimum Viable Product (aka. skateboard prototype) that addresses the whole solution in its simplest form in order to prioritize action and include your learners and stakeholders to make it better.
Scooter → Bicycle Prototype
Iterate on your initial prototype based on your experiences with implementation, feedback from stakeholders, and the nuances of various components of competency-based learning.
Motorcycle Prototype
Look through a systems lens to consider the necessary tools and supports to address your solution’s inherent complexity.
Action Planning
Pull back out to put all the pieces together to establish your immediate and long-term goals, outcomes, and leadership.
Bolster the team dynamic with best practices in distributed leadership, teambuilding, and motivation. Leave the Accelerator with a clear plan, a (semi) paved pathway, quality controls, and the joy and purpose of your team aligned for greatest impact on your learners.
Contact us to co-design an accelerator that best supports you on your CBE journey.