Step 1: Understanding Skill Standards-Based Curriculum
Skill Standards are a framework that connect an identified industry to the world of academia. Skill Standards inform an instructor's artistic development of curricula, learning activities, and assessment by providing industry voice to the process, expectations for skill development, and standards of skill performance."
[Andreas, Michele. (2000) Skill Standards for Professional-Technical College Instructors and Customized Trainers. Renton Technical College.]
This is an iterative process, and we want to stress that staying current with industry trends is critical. To learn the importance of the connection between what you do as a professional educator and what is required of your students as they enter the workforce, visit Step 8 and see the process outlined in depth.
Well designed IT curriculum:
- is modularized and designed for sharing
- is delivered via a variety of media
- clearly articulates learning outcomes
- gives students clear criteria for assessing their performance
- integrates technical and foundation skills/competencies into courses and programs
- maintains a congruency between competencies, activities, and assessments
- focuses on the demonstration of skills and application of knowledge (i.e., performance-based)
- incorporates work-simulated activities and projects whenever possible
- provides hands-on experience in the form of projects, scenario based tasks, labs and other activities
- meets market needs
- requires frequent program and faculty skills updates
Take the next step to update your curriculum: Go to Step 2!
Q: Who uses standards?
A: Most K-12 educators are familiar with standards based instruction because every state has its own K-12 required learning outcomes. For instance, in Washington state, these are called the Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs) and are based on the academic standards recommended by the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). (See the online grade-level resource to expand the EALRs resource.) Most institutions of higher education have developed or adopted academic standards, though the extent to which these are explicitly addressed varies greatly. Many community and technical colleges have adopted industry skill standards in a variety of their professional/technical programs.
National & State Standards Resources:
(sortable by state and topic)
Q: What is the difference between academic and industry skill standards?
A: Industry skill standards focus on what a worker should know and be able to do in identified industries while academic standards focus on what students should know and be able to do in core academic content areas.
Resources:
- This document explores three kinds of standards: academic, SCANs and industry <http://www.cord.org/print_page.cfm?Page=152>
- This document traces the history of the academic standards movement and outlines the various acts of Federal Legislation, including the No Child Left Behind Act, that have mandated the use of academic standards in K-12 <http://www.sonoma.edu/users/p/phelan/404/standards.htm>
Q: How do all of the various kinds of standards inter-relate? What about industry certifications-are these skill standards based?
A: Historically there has been little coordination between the variety of standards and certifications and how they should be leveraged in education. Increasingly, however, national organizations are calling for this kind of coordination.
Resources:
- The National Skill Standards Board provides resources examining the relationship between industry skill standards and industry certifications. NSSB resource page: <http://www.nssb.org/resources.cfm>
- This document details the content of a 2003 meeting examining the variety of ways to coordinate occupational skill standards and industry certifications. <http://www.nssb.org/focus2003.pdf>
Q: How are industry skill standards developed and what kinds of information do they contain?
A: Industry skill standards tell you what a worker needs to know and be able to do in order to perform a job task at a competent level. The NWCET industry skill standards also contain the SCANs, or foundational skills necessary to perform well in the workplace, such as critical thinking and problem solving.
The Washington State Skill Standards website contains skill standards information for more than twenty occupations as well as dowloadable Guidebooks for Skill Standards and Assessment:
Q: What can skill standards do for you and what are their limitations?
A: Industry skill standards will assist you in identifying gaps of knowledge and skills in the workforce that your students need to acquire in order to be successful in the workplace. Industry skill standards will provide you a recognizable and agreed upon framework in which to approach industry to discuss your curriculum and gain support for your programs. The skill standards will help you focus on skills and knowledge, rather than tools and platforms, so that you can identify what your students need to know and be able to do no matter what tools they use. Tools change rapidly, industry tells us they need people who know how to learn, not just use tools.
The NWCET IT skill standards do not identify specific tools or platforms so, for instance, you cannot determine from the skill standards if FrontPage or DreamWeaver is the industry preferred html editor. The industry skill standards are not written as academic standards and so are harder to translate into learning outcomes. Skill standards will not identify the finite set of skills and knowledge you need to focus on. The skill standards provide the universe of tasks a worker in a given field has to perform. You will have to define the constellation of tasks within that universe that your curriculum specializes in.
Q: What sorts of modifications or changes do you need to make to adapt the skill standards?
A: You will need to interview industry to add specificity to the skill standards required for developing curriculum. You will need to identify where in your curriculum important gaps exist between what your program emphasizes and what industry expects. The curriculum development toolkit provides web based interactive tools to help you streamline this process.
Resources:
You can order this book, from the Education Development Center that gives lots of short case studies on how various institutions and programs have implemented industry skill standards in their curriculum and assessments
Making Skill Standards Work: Lessons from the Field
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