Competency-based learning model in practice

Higher education faces many challenges today, primarily those concerning the actual needs of the labor market. There is a high percentage of people with the university degree but considerably smaller percentage of those who are competent for solving actual problems that business world faces. This fact has been recognized as one of the drawbacks of Bologna process, more precisely of its traditional methods of teaching and learning, and was the main motivator for developing a new model of learning in this paper. It is a Competency-Based Education (CBE) model that aims to develop more competent students prepared for the labor market. It basically relies on the shortcomings of the traditional teaching model and introduces new elements to improve the entire teaching process, keeping those who have had positive outcomes in practice. The resulting model of competency based education has been validated at the Faculty of Information Technology in Mostar, where certain methods of learning that this model proposes are applied, and students are recognized as one of the best when it comes to applying their knowledge in practice.