EWS: Development and Demonstration | Origin: ACCSC110
This is a general discussion forum for the following learning topic:
Preparing for ACCSC's Essential Workforce Skills Programmatic Certification -->EWS: Development and Demonstration
Post what you've learned about this topic and how you intend to apply it. Feel free to post questions and comments too.
student reflection is something that I would like to implement in each term/or lab experience. Also implementing the building of a journal of sorts, so students can go back and reflect on their accomplishments and use it as a tool for employers
I think this is the most significant shift for a lot of schools. This is more than just changing a few words around and adding some activities, it is asking for a change in how learning is approached. As a career school, we have no shortage of workforce activities being practiced and perfected, but there is an intentionality with this program that reminds students daily why they are there and what kind of progress they are making.
Comment on Billy Hanisee's post: Likewise, Billy--and it reminds us to to daily help them assess what kind of progress they are making and key in with them on how all their skills--technical and workforce--are coming into play in their curriculum.
For us, I especially appreciate the example in "Intentionally introduce problems into tasks"--a) that topside welding class example is a great illustration of something we could do in our program in several different courses; b) it's a keen reminder that troubleshooting and problem-solving are some very critical workforce skills in our students' environment (commercial diving) that it behooves us to HIGHLIGHT with them to increase their awareness, advancement, and articulation of how they've been practicing those skills.
It is important to present our students with opportunities to adapt on the fly and communicate amongst themselves to identify and solve issues they will eventually see in their respective fields.
Problem solving and trouble shooting are most definitely important components of the career training process. People lose jobs for character and skills well before simple book knowledge. They have got to learn how to apply what they know, not just regurgitate for the sake of passing an exam.
As part of this module, I learned about many interesting aspects of curriculum development and how to effectively integrate workforce skills into the same. In addition, I learned about Universal Design Learning which allows all students to learn even if the learning style varies among students.
I like the idea of putting headings, whitespace, definition boxes, etc. to simplify the text by amplify the content, but not watering it down.
I learned that it is crucial to personally develop ESW and lead by example while integrating the importance of ESW daily in the workplace and revisiting this topic frequently throughout their course load.
As instructors, we should offer evidence-based activities in higher education. This allows students' learning history, and prerequisites to predict their success. Because when students use evidence-based activities, their learning success improves. They are more motivated to learn and specific behavioral learning aspects aid in the research on self-regulated learning.
I think the reflection piece is very important. Students gain and develop various EWS, however, many are not able to reflect on them or able to connect between the purpose of some extracurricular activities and the otucomes of these in terms of skills and competencies. I think this is where teachers play a role as well as the institutional culture to continously promote these skills and help students make the connection between their learning on campus and how to implement and use these skills and competencies in their jobs.
