부산대학교 도서관

In 1997, in an unprecedented effort to resolve a number of practical problems that each of them faced, the governors of 19 western states formally established the Western Governors University (WGU). The governors wanted to create a student-centered yet market-oriented university that would be independent, networked, separately accredited and degree-granting, meet the needs of the western region through distance-learning technologies, and—most importantly—be competency-based. Today, eight years after its formal launch, the WGU is fulfilling this vision. WGU's competency model is not the only one in use today, but the technologies that have produced any-time, any-place learning, the demand for lifelong learning in all contemporary professions, and the admitted failure of traditional grading systems to reflect the learning that actually occurs in American classrooms all combine to make the evolution of a new system of measurement inevitable. The writer discusses the WGU competency model.