VOLUME X, NUMBER 28

#& INNOVATION A BSTRA CTS

 

What the Fox Needs to Know

The fox knows many things, but
the hedgehog knows one big thing.
Archilochus

High Fashion

CBL (competency based learning) is back in town.
Resplendent in color-coordinated garb, CBL is all order
and system, exuding rules and structures and steps.
CBL provides education's current high fashion look.
Traditional role-model instruction, by contrast, is little
more than rumpled corduroy. The appeal to our
beleaguered colleges and institutes is obvious: CBL
promises a stylish science of instruction to replace an
outmoded art.

The CBL process starts with getting together a group
of practitioners, what one authority calls the lunch
bucket brigade. They spend a predetermined time
{which sounds a lot like traditional instruction), usually
two or three days, with a facilitator and break down the
job into 100, or 150, or 287 specific tasks. These can
range from “communicate with peers” to “assemble
hij;h pressure air hose.” The result is the familiar
DACUM (Develop a Curriculum) chart, which contains
in detail everything which might appear on a job
description except “other tasks as assigned.” A little
problem here, because these “other tasks” often consti-
tule the major part of many jobs.

After cach task has been identified, it is put into a
competency format, which states a pre-specified level of
performance which must be achieved under pre-
specified conditions. Based on these statements, mod-
ules are developed—with pre-test, objectives, learning
materials, learning activities, and post-test.

CBL is very imposing, so precise and tidy, so tangible
and well-engineered. But does it work? Is CBL compe-
tent, or is it just the latest look?

A Plan Too Perfect

Probably the primary defect of CBL is what its
advocates believe to be its biggest strength: its mecha-
nistic precision. The development process wrings out
everything we can discover about a job and transforms
these things, and only these, into competencies. Thus,

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students learn what they need to learn and no more.
Clean, clear, efficient.

The problem is that many jobs do not parse very
easily. A few jobs, such as typist or elevator operator,
can be divided into specific skills without difficulty. A
group of journeymen hedgehogs, for example, could
probably develop a DACUM which would be sufficient
to prepare an apprentice for every conceivable hedge-
hogian task.

However, even occupations like caretaker contain
many qualities that fall between the cracks on the
DACUM. When the focus is entirely on tasks that
appear on the chart, some of the most critical qualities
may be inadvertently overlooked. Every rabbit knows
that the fox, one of nature’s prime entreprencurs, is
somehow more devious than his DACUM would
suggest. The rabbit wishes it were otherwise.

In the analysis of what went wrong in the Three Mile
Island nuclear accident in 1979, the Kemmeny Commis-
sion concluded that human error on the part of the
technicians caused the failure. The technicians re-
sponded by saying that they had not been trained for
the situation which they had to confront. The Commis-
sion looked at the training program and discovered that
the technicians had learned how to operate the reactor
without any understanding of why things happened.
They had been well trained to push the right buttons at
the right time, but they were incapable of dealing with
the unfamiliar.

[This kind of training brings to mind the explanation
made by a car manufacturer when criticized about the
quality of the brakes on his vehicles. The brakes, a
spokesman responded, are adequate in all normal
circumstances. This was hardly reassuring, as the times
you need really good brakes are in abnormal circum-
stances. |

In the process of getting all the tasks for a nuclear
technician written down on paper, the connections and
the meaning and the why must have gotten lost.
Indeed, it is probably impossible to write down all the
subtleties of most jobs. It is well known that novices are
better able to describe how they do their jobs than are
the experts. Expertise is increasingly understood to be
basically intuitive and not easily dredged up to the
conscious level. Furthermore, while novices tend to
approach the same task in the same way, cach expert

 

é mn THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD)
A Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin
EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712