Educators,Employers, andEmployability SkillsNSF ATE-PI ConferenceOctober 24, 2017

Welcome

Our Plans for Today: Learn about two ATE projects focused on

employability skills development and how you can get involved

Discuss the wide array of perspectives on what employability skills are and how they should be acquired

Hear from employers who will share on-the-job examples of employability skills gone wrong and how you can best prepare technicians for success in the STEM workplace

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Infusing Vital Employability Skills into Cybersecurity and Advanced Manufacturing Programs

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant DUE-1501990. Any

opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do

not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

5NSF ATE DUE #1501990

Big Picture• Evidence from both employers and researchers reveals

a lack of employability skills in today’s technical workforce. • Community college faculty understand the woes of employers

but have no room in their curriculum to add content.• The Necessary Skills Now (NSN) project paired faculty with

employers to develop curriculum integrating technical content and employability skills

• Two disciplines:• Advanced Manufacturing • Cybersecurity

IntegratedContent

EmployabilitySkills

TechnicalSkills

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Content Focus

1 2 3

4 5

skill category skill category skill category

skill category skill category

TEAMWORK PROBLEM SOLVING

VERBAL COMMUNICATION

WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

DEPENDABILITY/WORK ETHIC

6skill category

PLANNING AND ORGANIZING

7NSF ATE DUE #1501990

Curriculum Development

Working group for each sector Six development teams each Teams comprised of employer

and faculty member

Employers provide authentic industry scenarios to provide context for integrated projectFaculty serve as instructional designers

Sector Working Group

Development Team

Employer FacultyMember

DevelopmentTeam

8NSF ATE DUE #1501990

Collection of Integrated Projects Complete, workplace-relevant,

classroom-ready materials Address one or more employability skills Aligned to content already taught

9NSF ATE DUE #1501990

Faculty DevelopmentWorkshops in 2018 focused on how to... Identify intersections of technical and

employability content within a program of study Partner with employers to develop authentic

industry scenarios Design an effective integrated project

(from a template)

www.NecessarySkillsNow.org

21st Century Skills:

Project Development Used Crowd Source Methodology

Note about the collaborative: Project initially began October 2016 through broad email invite

from project manager to well-known ATE CoPIs

Series of conference calls and numerous emails solidified overall project goals and collaborative mechanisms

A crowd-source mechanism for generating and voting for project ideas was implemented through website and voting

General theme was to focus on broad student soft skills most desired by industry and how to best achieve them

Desire to extend the Resiliency project perfected at 4-year university for two-year community college

Four potential project ideas were reduced to two candidates that eventually yielded one fully developed proposal for submittal by Oct 5 deadline

Project Timeline and Synthesis

Project Proposal Timeline:

Oct-Dec 2016: initial conference calls (participants n = 30)

Jan-Mar 2017: crowd-source mechanism implemented by project manager (n = 20)

Apr-June 2017: website mini-proposals recruited, discussed and voted upon (n = 15)

July 2017: F2F meeting workshop @ HI-TEC Conference (n = 10)

Aug 2017: Resiliency project survived and developed into full proposal. Lead college changed twice during development (n = 7)

Oct 2017: Full proposal completed on Oct 2 and submitted on Oct 5 into Fastlane

21st Century Skills Project Collaboration:Building Student Resiliency through Inclusion

Project Goals and Objectives

Resiliency Project

A development and implementation project

Adapt a proven 4-year college instrument for 2-year college implementation

Overall goal is to increase student retention during freshman year through a specific intervention

Secondary goal is to determine if similar intervention can improve new employee retention following graduation

First year will be adapting the intervention and testing for efficacy in 2-year college setting

Second and third year will be implementing with four cohorts of learners (with a parallel industry effort)

Project Description

Resiliency Project

Lake Washington Institute of Technology and Del Mar College

Belonging intervention pioneered by Greg Walton, Geoffrey Cohen, David Yeager

Intervention takes only 30-45 minutes

Retention rate improvements of 4- 15%

52% reduction in the minority-majority GPA gap

Intervention works by lowering social belonging anxiety

Lowered anxiety then causes students to more fully take advantage of college’s resources and social networks

This joint industry-academic effort will validate whether a promising intervention can be successfully applied to community colleges and the workplace

Employability Skill Taxonomies

Dept. of Education Employability Skills Framework

Business Roundtable Common Employability Skills

Center for Curriculum Redesign, 4 Dimensional Education

Dept. of Labor Necessary Skills (original SCANS report, 1991)

P21.org, Framework for 21st Century Learning

Employability Skill Taxonomies

Today’s Panel

Matt GloverChief Technology Officer, Le-Vel

Donald McCoyPresident, Donald McCoy & Associates/Retired IBM Engineer

Tom Miller CEO, Western Industrial Tooling

Teamwork/Collaboration

Verbal Communication

Dependability andWork Ethic

Contact Us

Industry Panelists:

Matt Glovermatthew.glover@outlook.com

Don McCoythempitman@gmail.com

Tom Millertom.miller@WesternIndustrial.com

Necessary Skills Now Project:

Hope Cotnerhcotner@cord.org

John Chamberlainchamber@cord.org

Resiliency Project:

Merrilea Mayomerrileamayo@gmail.com

Phillip Davispdavis@delmar.edu