The APEGS membership voted in favour of changing to Competency-based Assessment (CBA) of work experience for geoscientists-in-training. The new online CBA system will allow geoscientists-in-training, validators and assessors to better gauge whether experience qualifies for professional registration. The change comes into effect January 1, 2021.
Does This Affect You?
If you are a geoscientist-in-training who has not submitted at least one complete experience report in the outgoing, paper-based system by January 1, 2021 then this applies to you. We are also encouraging everyone who has already started reporting in the outgoing, paper-based system to switch to the new CBA system. See the APEGS website under Members, “Competency-Based Assessment – Geo” for more details.
How to Access CBA Online.
APEGS will notify you when the CBA online system is ready for geoscientists-in-training to start entering their competencies. The website for the online system is https://competencyassessment.ca. Follow the instructions on the site to create your account. Your APEGS registration file # is required. APEGS will be contacted to authorize your account because the CBA system is separate from the APEGS database.
Benefits of CBA.
CBA makes experience reporting easier and more transparent. It is highly recommended that geoscientists-in-training switch to the new CBA system even if they have already submitted reports in the outgoing, paper-based system. You may use experience examples from the paper-based system, but you must transfer the information from there in the online CBA system for it to be considered.
It is easier to gauge if your experience qualifies for professional registration and therefore increases your confidence when writing your submission.
• What constitutes acceptable geoscience work experience has not changed. It is more explicitly described.
• There are “workplace examples” in the system to provide more insight into what type of work will satisfy a competency.
• Workplace examples help applicants interpret the competency descriptions to better understand which experience to include.
It is more quantitative and objective.
• There is an explicitly described rating scale from 0 to 5 that applicants, validators and assessors all use.
Only 29 examples required.
• You provide one example for each of the 29 competencies from any time in your entire geoscience work history. You do not have to describe all your work experience in detail.
It is online.
• The online system facilitates all information entry, sharing and notifications. No more coordination of supervisor signatures is required by the applicant.
This is the home page of the CBA system.