THE SOLUTION:
Often, curriculum development consultation and faculty workshops can help faculty, instructional designers, and curriculum developers understand how to work with skill standards in a productive way that results in integrated student activities and authentic evaluation and assessment. It is important to recognize that every skill standards curriculum implementation is different. In part, this is the value of skill standards, since they do not force any one scope, sequence, or organizational structure. Consultation and workshops provide organizational frameworks which can be tailored to the institution's instructional goals, faculty capacity, local employer needs, and student body.
WHAT WORKED:
NWCET has worked with statewide consortia like the Maryland State Department of Education, to operationalize skill standards based curriculum. In the Maryland example, key educators and instructional designers in prominent institutions in the state attended implementation workshops that helped them understand the elements of curriculum design and gave them hands-on practice developing instructional elements (lessons, activities, and evaluations / assessments) using pre-existing instructional goals. Maryland also conducted a statewide review of the NWCET IT skill standards to localize the standards to specific employer needs. Individual campuses or districts can scale the skill standards review effectively. By asking industry for input on what technical and employability skills are most required in the local area, educators can quickly gather information that can prioritize the large amount of skill standards data to a subset that is most pertinent to the program under development. Having interdisciplinary instructional teams review the employability skills, technical knowledge, and performance indictors, helps ensure related courses or IT technical courses taught out of different departments, are aligned to the overall instructional outcomes.
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