Identifying Structure in Program-Level Competencies and Skills

Programs in an online competency-based higher education (OCBHE) institute will focus on a set of skills and competencies that form a theme throughout multiple courses, where one course builds upon another in terms of increasing the strength or depth of competency. Thus, for students within a given program or major, it is ideal for scores from course assessments with overlapping content to correlate and indicate higher-order skills or competencies. The purpose of this study was to use factor analysis to test the internal and structural validity of course-level performance assessment scores for a group of courses taken as part of a data analytics program in an OCBHE institution. Moreover, the presence of program-level competencies was investigated using hierarchical factor analysis for two groups: a faster, shorter course track and a slow, longer course track. Results supported validity at the course level as well as the presence of a higher-order factor (program-level competency) for the fast course track but not the slow track.