Competencies are becoming the new currency for job seekers and businesses filling their talent needs. The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration has released three new videos in its series, How to Crosswalk Competency Models for Curriculum Development. The video series dives into how postsecondary education is collaborating with businesses in Cybersecurity, Engineering, Advanced Manufacturing, and Events Management to determine key academic, personal effectiveness, workplace, and industry-wide technical competencies. Identifying and weaving in-demand competencies into the curriculum and student learning experience have positively impacted programs.
The first of the three new videos, Alignment of Industry Based Credential Competencies with Academic Curriculum, showcases Indiana’s Ivy Tech Community College School of IT’s approach to aligning CompTIA, CISCO, and other IT industry-based credential competencies within their entire program. Additionally, they use the USDOL Cyber Security model and the NICE framework to build an in-depth process to ensure the programs/courses meet industry and academic needs at the same time.
In the new Development of Programmatic Curriculum video, faculty members from Sinclair College in Ohio, Dallas College in Texas, and Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana share their specific strategies on creating curriculum using the competency models. These colleges leveraged the industry competency models to guide initial conversations with their business partners and further integrate competencies into course work. Students can demonstrate learned competencies at the end of the course.
The Stacking the Deck for Students video highlights Ohio University’s instructional innovation project that uses a “card deck” of competencies, from the Engineering Competency Model, to motivate and integrate student engagement to increase learning and competitiveness for career opportunities. The “cards” add a layer of gamification for students as students respond to interview questions or work-based scenarios. Once answered, students can create personalized development maps linking where they are now to future goals. This mapping aids new and graduating students to identify acquired competencies and areas for growth.
To see this entire video series on How to Crosswalk Competency Models with Curriculum, please visit the Competency Model Clearinghouse website.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.