i. Evidence-Based Program Development and Implementation Strategies
Using the NCRC and related tools in the five critical elements of the Career Pathways SGA:
i. Evidence-Based Program Development and Implementation Strategies
Applicants must include strategies and techniques that have demonstrated effectiveness for delivering, scheduling, and/or sequencing education and training courses that result in the attainment of industry-recognized credentials. These credentials must lead to progressively higher-level credentials or degrees, and may include “stackable” credentials of value in the labor market.
Tools such as the National Career Readiness Certificate (NCRC), WorkKeys®, KeyTrain®, and Career Ready 101 can add tremendous value in any career pathways strategy. The credential is evidence-based and the flexible, online learning tools have been shown to increase work ready skills in high school, community college, adult education, and WIA clientele (see evidence in Appendix E). The targeted training tools (Career Ready 101 and KeyTrain) are designed specifically to close skills gaps measured for each individual in career readiness skills (see evidence in Appendix F).
Based on the WorkKeys system, The National Career Readiness Certificate (NCRC), issued by ACT, is a portable, evidence-based credential that measures essential workplace skills and is a reliable predictor of workplace success. This credential is used across all sectors of the economy and measures the following skills:
· Problem solving
· Critical thinking
· Reading and using written, work-related text
· Applying information from workplace documents to solve problems
· Applying mathematical reasoning to work-related problems
· Setting up and performing work-related mathematical calculations
· Locating, synthesizing, and applying information that is presented graphically
· Comparing, summarizing, and analyzing
information presented in multiple related graphics
Career Ready 101: The learning tool for all aspects of career readiness
Career Ready 101 is a comprehensive, easy-to-use curriculum to help individuals master the work readiness skills they need to be successful in a changing workplace. This internet-based learning system includes courses in career awareness and exploration, career preparation, job search, career success skills, financial awareness and the foundational work skills measured by the ACT WorkKeys® job skills assessment system. Career Ready 101 incorporates tools and activities for identifying career interests, developing a resume, creating and managing a personal budget and exploring careers through job shadowing and mentoring. The curriculum is organized in four broad units:
· Introduction to Career Ready 101
Learners gain an overview of all the courses and lessons in Career Ready 101, an exploration of what it takes to become career-ready and an introduction to WorkKeys and the National Career Readiness Certificate.
· Finding Your Career
This unit features lessons on career clusters, defining career interests using tools such as an embedded version of the O*NET Interest Profiler, researching occupational information and skill requirements, the job search process, job applications, resumes, interviewing skills, financial awareness and real world career experience.
· KeyTrain Workplace Skills
KeyTrain courses are designed specifically to help individuals improve the work readiness skills measured by the WorkKeys system are part of Career Ready 101. The curriculum for each KeyTrain course is based on ACT’s WorkKeys Targets for Instruction to ensure the skills measured in the WorkKeys assessments are covered in KeyTrain. Each KeyTrain course corresponds to one of the WorkKeys skill areas and includes a pretest, interactive lessons for skill mastery and posttests to document improvement. Scores on KeyTrain pretests are not actual WorkKeys scores and should not be used for hiring, promotion or other high stakes decisions. KeyTrain can help learners to achieve higher scores on the WorkKeys assessments and obtain a National Career Readiness Certificate.
· KeyTrain Career Skills
Career Skills incorporates 200 interactive lessons in Work Habits, Business Etiquette, Job Search, Communication Skills and Workplace Effectiveness. These are the personal skills individuals should master to succeed in the workplace.
Career Ready 101 lessons are designed to ensure a rigorous interactive learning process. Each topic finishes with a short topic quiz as a gauge for measuring the learner’s comprehension of each topic skill objective. Courses include a final quiz. Learners who pass the quiz may print a certificate to document their achievement. Administrators and instructors may limit the number of final quiz attempts students may make and have access to answer keys to all quizzes.
The system used in career pathways, stackable certificate programs.
Industry: Stackable Certificate Programs include the National Career Readiness Certificate as the starting point in measuring workplace readiness. Once foundational skills are certified with the NCRC, industry and job-specific certifications can be layered on.
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)-Endorsed Skills Certification System is grounded on the National Career Readiness Certificate (NCRC) to validate the personal effectiveness, academic, and workplace skills that make an individual ready for work or college.
The National Center for Construction Education and Research uses the NCRC as the tool to ensure that prospective and current construction industry workers have the essential foundational skills to succeed in NCCER accredited training courses and on the job.
The Center for Energy Workforce Development (CEWD) and ACT, Inc., have announced a partnership designed to provide a common entry point for individuals interested in pursuing energy industry careers.
In incorporating this critical element into proposals, applicants could include the following practices, which have shown promising outcomes in research, including studies listed in Attachment B:
• Strategies to accelerate educational and career advancement for individual participants, regardless of their skills at the point of entry;
The learning tools, Career Ready 101 and KeyTrain contain placement tests that quickly determine each individual’s starting point. The system automatically assigns each person the appropriate curriculum for their needs. The pre-test is a shortened adaptive assessment similar to the actual WorkKeys assessment. The pre-test is used to recommend the lessons that the user should take in the course and can be customized even more based on certificate goals or job goals. Scores on KeyTrain pre-tests are not actual WorkKeys scores. The student proceeds into the actual curriculum that is divided Each topic is organized into an Overview, Learning, Practice and Quiz section to ensure a rigorous learning process. Each topic finishes with a short topic quiz which provides a gauge for measuring the comprehension of each topic skill objective. Every lesson includes a final quiz for the skill level. The final quiz selects questions typical of that level in a WorkKeys assessment. Questions are randomly selected from a database so that if the user retakes the quiz, questions will differ. Learners who pass the quiz may print a certificate to document their completion of the level. Administrators and instructors have the ability to limit the number of final quiz attempts students may make and can also access answer keys to all quizzes in the main menu.
• Development and implementation of articulation agreements governing the transfer of academic credits between cooperating institutions. These formal agreements can help to minimize the need for students to repeat previously-completed coursework;
Many colleges have found ways to relate the National Career Readiness Certificate levels to the skills of programs.
• Instructional strategies that make work a central context for learning (contextualized learning) and help students attain work readiness skills. This may include, as appropriate for the individual, integrating occupational skills training with adult education services;
All Career Ready 101 and KeyTrain curriculum is workplace based in context. Further, some components can be contextualized specifically for the 16 DOL career clusters. There is a Career Clusters Module for each of the 16 DOL career clusters that explain the relevance of WorkKeys skills – Reading for Information, Applied Mathematics and Locating Information to each of these clusters. Based on this the system allows a student to take the KeyTrain skill building materials with relevance in mind.
The Career Ready 101 system includes extensive career exploration so that users can match instruction with their career goals. The system works as outlined below.
Career Exploration
Students use the Career Exploration tools to:
· find information about jobs they have saved,
· find the WorkKeys skills and skills levels for jobs and
· read descriptions of each WorkKeys skill and definitions of the skill levels jobs may require.
Clicking on Career Exploration opens the screen below. Notice the three tabs.
The Search tab opens a utility students can use to search the database of O*NET jobs.
Students can search by Job Title, Career Cluster, Job Description keywords and/or by WorkKeys skill level.
This example shows a search for jobs with the keyword “computer” in the job title. The student has also entered his or her WorkKeys test scores (level 5) in the Skill Area and specified a search for All Qualified Jobs. To initiate a search, the student clicks on the Search button.
The search generates a list of 6 jobs with the keyword “Computer” in the title that require a Level 5 skill in WorkKeys Reading, Math and Locating Information.
To find more information on a job, the student simply clicks on the job title to see the job description, median WorkKeys skills and typical job tasks.
This is the report for Computer Support Specialists.
Learners can save the job as a favorite by clicking on the Save to My Favorite Jobs List button. The job will be displayed with other favorite occupations in the next tab, Saved and Favorites.
The Saved and Favorites tab lists all jobs the student has saved or marked as favorites. In this example, the student has clicked on the star in the Favorite column to mark Diagnostic Medical Sonographer as a favorite career. The student can designate a job as their current favorite by clicking the radio buttons in the Current column or delete a job from the Saved Jobs list by selecting the red delete button.
Clicking on a job title opens a popup with the job’s O*NET information. If WorkKeys skill levels are available for the job, they will be displayed. This example shows the result for Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technicians. The Median Skill Level shows the target WorkKeys skills and skill levels needed to perform the job tasks. Below the WorkKeys information is a list of typical job tasks performed by MLTs. Students can click on the O*NET code under the job title to go directly to the O*NET Summary Report for the occupation.
The third tab, Skill Details, lists all of the WorkKeys skills. Clicking on the down arrow for a skill title opens the description of the skill and each skill level the WorkKeys system measures.
Once the job profile is selected for the user, the KeyTrain system can provide appropriate skill development that is pertinent to the selected job/career.
• “Cohort” learning strategies that are designed to enable project participants to pursue coursework with the same classmates over a fixed period of time. Cohort groups can foster shared knowledge and a sense of continuity that helps to assure that each individual is able to complete the requirements of a training program within a specific timeframe; and/or,
N/A
• Strategies to address the needs of working adults by accommodating student work schedules through techniques such as flexible and non-semester-based scheduling, alternative class times and locations, and/or the innovative use of technology (such as distance education).
Career Ready 101 and KeyTrain are online, self-paced learning tools. This allows for innovative use of technology as well as flexible scheduling as students can learn whenever and wherever they are available (with Internet access). The modular nature of the courses and tools allow flexibility. Career Ready 101 contains a unique calendaring function which allows non-semester based scheduling through technology. This is a patent-applied for feature.
Calendars
Career Ready 101 teaching resources include an interactive calendar instructors may use to:
· schedule dates for a class’ agenda assignments,
· change the dates for class assignments,
· save an agenda as a calendar template to apply to other classes and
· launch a teaching session directly from the calendar view.
This section of the guide demonstrates how to use calendars to help schedule and manage Career Ready 101 self-paced online assignments and classroom-based instruction.
To add class lesson assignments to the calendar, open the Agenda Manager. In the last activity we assigned lessons from each of the four Career Ready 101 curriculum units to a class. Now we can add these lessons to the calendar.
Notice the three icons in the Actions column of the Agenda Manager. The instructor can delete an assignment, begin a teaching session or edit dates for an assignment.
Instructors can use the commands in the top bar of the Agenda Manager to add and edit assignments, save an agenda as a template to use for other classes, clear assignments from an agenda and go to the Calendar View. A legend at the bottom of the Agenda Manager shows the color code for the three basic types of Career Ready 101 lessons – KeyTrain Workplace Skills, KeyTrain Career Skills and the Career Readiness lessons. To add an assignment to the calendar, click on the Edit dates icon.
A calendar popup will appear similar to this example. The current date has a red box around it. Notice that in this example, Monday the 12th of October, like the weekend days, is shaded. This is because that day is Columbus Day and classes may not be in session. Major holidays will be similarly shaded to let the instructor know the day may not be available for teaching a lesson.
To select a date for a lesson, click on the date and click the Apply button. To teach a lesson on the current date, click the Today button. To clear a date selection, click the Undo button and then the Apply button to save the change. In the example above, October 21st has been selected for a teaching session.
Be aware that many Career Ready 101 lessons contain several separate topics which may take the instructor several days to cover if teaching by classroom instruction. Likewise, students taking lessons online at their own pace will need several hours or more to complete a set of topic lessons. For example, the KeyTrain Applied Mathematics Level 4 lesson has eight topic lessons and a final quiz. The lesson might take students 8 to 15 hours or so to complete.
After you have selected dates for the lessons on the class agenda and applied them, Career Ready 101 will return you to the Agenda Manager view where your agenda items will be listed. The example below for the 6th period Career Club class has six assignments. Notice under the Scheduled Dates column, assignments are sorted by date from those occurring sooner to those occurring later in the calendar. Instructors may sort the order view from ascending to descending and vice-versa.