Reframing Learning: An Invitation to Design With Students in Mind

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Think about a unit you love to teach. What do you hope students will remember? What should they be able to do with their learning? How will they recognize their progress—and see why the learning matters?

These questions are at the heart of Reframing Learning: The Competency-Based Design Journey, NHLI’s new online course for educators and leaders.

I am excited to invite you into this experience because it brings together work I care deeply about: thoughtful curriculum design, meaningful assessment, and learning that helps students become more capable, confident, and independent.

Whether you are beginning to explore competency-based education or strengthening an established practice, this course offers a place to connect ideas, reflect on your teaching, and create something useful for your students.

Connecting the Pieces of Competency-Based Education

Competency-based education begins with clear expectations for what students should know, understand, and be able to do. It asks us to gather meaningful evidence of learning, respond to students’ needs, and create opportunities for them to apply and transfer what they have learned.

Making that vision visible in a classroom takes intentional design.

Competencies, priority/essential standards, lesson targets, instruction, and assessment need to work together. Students need to understand the destination, recognize what quality looks like, and have opportunities to use feedback as they move forward.

Reframing Learning helps educators build these connections through NHLI’s Curriculum Framework and “Line of Logic”—a clear relationship between the learning we intend, the experiences we design, and the evidence we collect.

Strong knowledge and skills provide the foundation. Purposeful practice develops understanding. Meaningful tasks give students opportunities to use their learning, explain their thinking, and make decisions.

Throughout this process, teacher expertise matters. Educators make thoughtful choices about the content, support, challenge, and experiences their students need.

Build Something You Can Use

The course follows a design journey in which each component contributes to a complete unit portfolio.

Participants develop engaging unit introductions, clear learning outcomes, academic competencies, priority/essential standards, and student-friendly lesson targets. They plan formative assessment, create a learning roadmap, integrate student agency, and design a performance task that asks students to apply their learning.

The journey also includes success habits, clear descriptions of proficiency, and scaffolding and extension opportunities that help different learners access meaningful challenges.

Together, these components become a connected plan for teaching and learning—and a model educators can return to when designing future units.

Imagine students beginning a unit with a clear sense of its purpose. They can explain what they are learning, use feedback to identify their next steps, and recognize how daily lessons prepare them for a meaningful task. This design process supports that kind of learning experience.

Keeping the Student Experience at the Center

One of the most valuable questions we can ask during planning is: What will this feel like from the student’s perspective?

Will students understand the expectations? Will they see a connection to their lives or interests? Will they have opportunities to reflect, make choices, and take increasing responsibility for their learning?

Student agency grows through these everyday experiences. Clear goals, useful feedback, self-assessment, and purposeful choices help students become active participants in their learning.

The course invites educators to examine their plans through this lens and use student feedback to refine them. It also treats success habits—such as self-direction—as learnable behaviors that deserve explicit teaching, practice, and support.

Professional Learning With Room to Think and Apply

Educators need professional learning that respects both the complexity of their work and the realities of their lives.

An online course can make participation more accessible by reducing travel and bringing professional learning closer to where educators work. It also creates opportunities to connect new ideas with an actual planning challenge.

The value comes from that connection between study and application. As you examine a concept, you can consider its place in your unit. As the design develops, you can check alignment, reflect on your choices, and identify what needs refinement.

In Reframing Learning, participants demonstrate their learning through the portfolio they build. Clear expectations, application, self-assessment, and reflection are woven into the experience—the same principles we want to make available to students.

The course syllabus includes six graduate credits through Southern New Hampshire University, connecting professional growth with a substantial curriculum-design experience.

An Invitation to Begin

You do not need to have every part of competency-based education figured out before you begin. Bring your experience, your questions, and a unit you want to strengthen.

Perhaps you want clearer learning targets. Perhaps you are ready to develop a more meaningful performance assessment. Perhaps you want students to better understand their progress or take a stronger role in their learning.

Those are worthwhile places to start.

At NHLI, we believe thoughtful professional learning helps educators turn a vision for student-centered education into daily practice. Reframing Learning invites you to take that next step—to design with greater clarity, connect the pieces, and create learning experiences with lasting purpose.

We would love to have you join us.

Explore Reframing Learning: The Competency-Based Design Journey and take your next step with NHLI.