Competency-based education’s underlying goal is ensuring learners develop mastery of all the competencies within a course.  Typically, achieving that goal is not accomplished via a single submission of an artifact or the one-time performance of a task.    

Accordingly, CBE has built into it the expectation that students have multiple attempts at demonstrating competency mastery = they can turn in multiple submissions of an assessment or performance a task more than once.  This approach places demands on both instructors and learners by implying faculty will be timely and constructive in providing their feedback – so it can be leveraged as soon as possible by a learner to improve their mastery, and that prior to resubmitting work, the student spends time reviewing the feedback, revisiting course materials, and relearning necessary skills.

When developing a CBE course, instructors must determine what resubmission means in their class.  Are students allowed to resubmit the same assignment multiple times or perform the same task in exactly the same scenario again and again?  Or, while the assessment and the task differ?  This is an important consideration when creating content and determining competency evaluation.

A learner is defined as “proficient” when they achieve 80% or higher in meeting a competency, and learners must earn that score on all competencies in order to pass a CBE class.