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Date: July 16th, 2008
Author: David Swalve
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No, it isn’t Ice Cube for all of us who remember the rapper turned Anaconda writer, it is C-Cubed—Constantly Changing Curriculum.
In our space, we have accepted that better is often more important than more. We don’t demand that the student give us 4 to 7 years of their lives to learn an occupation, instead we believe that we can condense education and training down to a manageable timeframe—often less than one year—that still allows the student to gain the skills for success. However, the trick here is that our curriculum needs to stay as nimble and appropriate as do the occupations that they serve. Thus, we must demand C-Cubed from all of our education folk.
In 2003, the American Association of Medical Assistants, altered for the first time since 1991, their role delineation chart. That chart identifies the areas of competence required to do the job expected of a successful Medical Assistant. The change begs the question, “How many schools have changed their curriculum to stay in line with the changed expectations?” MA is not the only profession that has a dynamic set of competencies, but often our Career Colleges fail to appropriately change their curriculum’s to stay current. Some do, and they continue to attract the best students.
How can you Constantly Change Curriculum? Well, first start with curriculum mapping. Have your program coordinator and/or your champion instructor lead a curriculum mapping exercise. There are various methods, but basically start with the first class all the way through the last class and outline each course goal, the essential skills and concepts taught in each course, the methods of assessment, and the content resources used to ensure the transfer of skill and knowledge. The purpose of a curriculum map is to document the relationship between every component of the curriculum. Used as an analysis, communication, and planning tool, a curriculum map will:
- Allow educators to review the curriculum for redundancies, inconsistencies, incongruence, shortcomings, and gaps;
- Documents the timing and relationships between the required components and the intended student learning outcomes;
- Identifies what students have learned, allowing educators to focus on building on previous knowledge.
After you have completed the curriculum map, compare the goals, skills and concepts delivered to an expert association (like the AAMA). At that point your program coordinator should be able to recommend changes to you in order to have a “better” program.
Better is better than more.
David Pettrone Swalve runs Swalve Education Solutions and works with schools by providing increased organizational capacity to allow for growth of new programs, online learning, organizational renewal as well as classroom management training. David can be reached at 831 325 1618 or david@swalvesolutions.com.
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Date: September 3rd, 2007
Author: David Swalve
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Our students bring with them limited amounts of hardware. We provide them with the software and hopefully connect them to the information highway during their short tenure with us by directing them to professional opportunities they would not have been able to harness without us. But I’m not writing to talk about the gigos or gigas, I’m here to ask if we are maximizing the hardware, using it for all its worth.
Stephen Covey challenges his readers to find ways to unleash the potential of every member of the team. Your challenge as an instructor, Director of Education or Executive director is to maximize your student’s assets.
Dr. Covey talks about Herb Brooks, the coach of the 1980 fabled “Miracle on Ice” team that brought us gold in hockey. Dr. Covey explains that despite low expectations of the team and of the coach, Mr. Brooks found a way to tap into the body, mind, heart and spirit of his players. They became, as Covey describes a “lean, powerful team defined by one wildly important goal.”
Of course, we can’t offer our students an Olympic Gold medal (although some schools do give gold out for individual achievement) but we can offer them the opportunity to learn something new every day. If we can help our students unleash their power of learning, they have a chance at winning gold in their lifetime.
At our school we have one session per term where we have round-table discussions on what we’ve learned outside of the curriculum. You’d be surprised on what the students are learning, when you sit down ask them and then challenge them. I ask everyday, are you learning something? Because if they are, we’re winning, and winning is the only thing….right coach?
David Pettrone Swalve runs Swalve Education Solutions and works with schools by providing increased organizational capacity to allow for growth of new programs, online learning, organizational renewal as well as classroom management training. David can be reached at 831 325 1618 or david@swalvesolutions.com.
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Date: August 20th, 2007
Author: David Swalve
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Teaching students “how to think” not “what to think” is a balancing act in any short-term, fast-paced program. We can however take the time to help our students develop workplace and career skills that transcend the certification requirements of the core.
If you’re anything like me, you don’t like missing too much. That initial introduction, handshake or group joining action is often the most anxiety driven event of any conference or professional gathering for me. So, since the epicenter of the universe is somewhere just below my zyphoid process, I thought I’d share a short lesson I learned while at my first school on networking.
Our director had an open house night during week 7 of a 12 week term. We’d prep the kids and get them ready to show off their skills, their knowledge, their teachers and their future employers. A lot of students didn’t want to do it (like me), so we had to nudge them a bit.
We explained…First, networking is part of your job. It’s not just being polite by introducing yourself or by making small talk, it’s your opportunity to do your job. Second, you can make it less painful by putting metrics around it. Set goals of how many business cards you want to take in, or employment applications you want to fill out. Tell yourself that you will walk around for 45 minutes, then reward yourself with an ice cream sundae.
We gave them tips. Go to the library to read some current periodicals about your learning subject. This will give you topics to “small talk”. Write down some notes before you go, perhaps about the building or the organization hosting the event, if you get stuck, review your list in the bathroom. Say it. Practice saying hello to people and introducing yourself. Practice your salutations on your kids, friends or whoever will let you practice.
This is just an example of how we can balance teaching “how to think” not “what to think”, learning how will last them a lifetime.
David Pettrone Swalve runs Swalve Education Solutions and works with schools by providing increased organizational capacity to allow for growth of new programs, online learning, organizational renewal as well as classroom management training. David can be reached at 831 325 1618 or david@swalvesolutions.com.
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Date: August 6th, 2007
Author: David Swalve
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Yesterday I was watching Jack Welch give an interview. Jack, one of the most recognized CEOs in the world, was talking about what he wants from employees. Now, as educators, we don’t have as much of a chance as a CEO does to hire employees, but I think that we can use his advice on what he looks for in employees to challenge ourselves as instructors and to ask ourselves if we are trying to develop those same characteristics in our students.
Here are the attributes that Jack looks for from his employees:
• “Smarter than me” – Jack says that he definitely tries to find employees who are smarter than he is, as well as those who can develop his employees’ smarts!
• “Energize” – This is the first of the “three E’s” as he calls them. Does this person have the ability to energize those around her/him?
• “Execute” – Do they get it done when given the task?
• “Edge” – Does the employee have that certain something that is always close to the precipice?
• Finally, he wants “passion,” as he goes on to say in the interview that passion is not something you can teach.
First, when you look at the list that Jack has created, are you there? Do you have all five attributes? Do you work on the development of all five attributes?
Second, your students – are you looking to nurture their skills to help create students that are smarter than you, have energy, know how to execute, display the edge and are passionate about what they do? Or are you the one trying to ensure everyone knows you are smarter than they are; that you only appreciate silent attendance; or you smile when the student doesn’t do well because it reminds you that they need you?
Third, what can you point to that is integrated in your curriculum, that is promoted to your students or carried out in the classroom that helps to let your students know what Jack wants, or, for that matter, what their future employers want?
David Pettrone Swalve runs Swalve Education Solutions and works with schools by providing increased organizational capacity to allow for growth of new programs, online learning, organizational renewal as well as classroom management training. David can be reached at 831 325 1618 or david@swalvesolutions.com.
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Date: April 9th, 2007
Author: David Swalve
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There are multiple outcome measures that we use to help shed light on the end-purpose issues of quality and educational effectiveness, workforce preparation and retraining, quality of technical/vocational education, and continuing education and lifelong learning as they individually affect our sector’s impact on providing a public good. Here is a generic assessment framework to evaluate how good our public good is:
- Quality and Educational Effectiveness. Are we working smarter and not harder? We live with constraints, so are we as effective as possible?
- Workforce Preparation and Retraining. Are we listening to our PACs as to what we need to get them prepared? Do we offer access to retraining options for our graduates?
- Quality of Vocational/Technical Education. Are we staying in contact with employers? How often is our career services specialist bringing in employers and asking for real feedback about our students?
- Continued Education and Lifelong Learning. What example are we setting? Do we make CEUs and lifelong learning the cornerstones of our staff and faculty? It will be hard to ensure this outcome is accomplished if we don’t support it at all levels. Are our faculty members promoting this idea?
What tools are we using to assess the outcomes we expect? All of the examples I give below are valuable tools, but individually they all have shortcomings:
- IPEDS, as much of a pain as it is to submit, is built around a series of interrelated surveys to collect institution-level data in such areas as enrollments, program completions, faculty, staff and finances. This measure provides insight into the educational success of the institution, which relates directly to quality and educational effectiveness.
- Economic indicators, revenues, gross profits, EBITDA comparisons and net income are all recipes to describe our educational effectiveness, but still miss the quality.
- Regulatory bodies provide a great service by promoting quality education practices and measure some aspects of all of the end-purpose issues listed, but again fail to remain ever vigilant. Despite their appreciated brutal honesty at times, they are not always around to tell you the real deal.
- Qualitative feedback from instructors, students, administrators and people intimately involved in your programs does exist. The perspective remains myopic; we compare what we are doing to what we have done, and not what we are doing as it impacts the workforce. There is also the risk of having the “yes” women and men around us that dilutes the quality of the qualitative feedback.
- Experts in their respective fields can provide us with some of the most critical and perhaps most crucial feedback around. We can capitalize on access to these experts through externships, capstone education events and special events. This necessary complement to assessment tools provides us with candid external feedback about the product prior to entry into the workforce.
The idea that I think we fail to adequately capture is the qualitative feedback through experts. At my school I promote the idea of a capstone event where external experts evaluate and assess the students before they hit the workforce.
I think these types of learning opportunities are valuable to the student and perhaps even more valuable to the school for candid critiques of the public good we are providing —quality education. I want to learn more, so please share with all of us or send me your innovations of capstone events — internships, externships, capstone courses, external training centers, etc. Let’s find out how we all can benefit from your quality education ideas.
David Pettrone Swalve runs Swalve Education Solutions and works with schools by providing increased organizational capacity to allow for growth of new programs, online learning, organizational renewal as well as classroom management training. David can be reached at 831 325 1618 or david@swalvesolutions.com.
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