Curriculum alignment use case for competency frameworks at the Naval Postgraduate School

Abstract

The US Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, is sponsoring a strategic initiative led by a team from the Naval Postgraduate School Systems Engineering Department to implement an overall approach to study and develop a systems engineering career competency model. Competencies are defined as the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary for a systems engineer to perform tasks related to the discipline. The Naval Postgraduate School has used a competency framework for educational curriculum development purposes. Each competency and the associated KSAs are partitioned into a series of typical career development points, to allow for planning and tracking of a competency-based development of systems engineers. The focus of this paper is on use of competency frameworks for aligning curricula to meet stakeholder competency requirements, using a specific course implementation example.