from the preface to Ability-Based Learning Outcomes: Teaching and Assessment at Alverno College, 2005
Alverno College tipped the academic scales of higher education when it initiated a new way of teaching and learning in 1973. With a cutting edge program dubbed CBL or “Competence Based Learning”, Alverno introduced the revolutionary idea of teaching students to learn, internalize, and then externalize and apply knowledge gained in the classroom to their life and their workplace.
There were many academic critics and skeptics in those first years of the program. However, almost fifty years later, Alverno has prevailed as the acknowledged leader in the field of ability-based curricula.