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:

1. Quality and Educational Effectiveness. Are we working smarter and not harder? We live with constraints, so are we as effective as possible?
2. 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?
3. 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?
4. 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:

1. 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.
2. Economic indicators, revenues, gross profits, EBITDA comparisons and net income are all recipes to describe our educational effectiveness, but still miss the quality.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

Okay, so what does the Volkswagen Jetta I bought back in 1986 have to do with your career college's curriculum? If you have to ask, then obviously you haven't read my column in the March edition of Career College Central magazine.

On page 39, I discuss how my Jetta is a good example of how I got in on the ground floor of an innovation that became a huge success. The moral of that comparison is that good ideas stick around awhile. I make the same connection with one of the fastest-growing new curriculums in the career college sector: personal fitness training.

Next time you take a spin in your car - whatever the model might be - take a look at strip malls and notice how many exercise facilities you see. Then think about the number of personal trainers it takes to staff those businesses or who might not be formally affiliated with the management, but use the facilities to train clients.

There are a ton of them. Career colleges are the biggest ... suppliers, for lack of a better term ... of personal fitness trainers to the fitness industry. If your college hasn't looked into personal fitness training as a possible program offering, then you're missing the boat. Personal fitness training is the type of program that gives your curriculum the diversity it needs to stand out from all the other career colleges on your block.

I'm not the only one who has noticed the rise of the popularity with this program. In my article, I quote research from the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association. Studies show there are more than 23,500 health clubs in the U.S. today. Half of them identified personal training as their No. 1 most profitable service.

Those are big numbers, no matter how you look at it, and your career college can help students find careers in this exciting new profession. The jobs are out there. The audience is out there. Why not take a serious look at personal fitness training? If you need more convincing, be sure to check out my article.

Let's take a closer look at our curricula through an evaluative lens--like the eyes of a teacher. Most teachers outline competencies or other objective measures as a way to evaluate student performance. Over the next few blogs let's establish some criteria for evaluating our curriculum. Ultimately, we want to answer the question of what to do with the curriculum(s). I think we have three choices: let them be, revise them, or get a current one. But in between we have to measure them to provide our feedback (actions).

Looking forward another few weeks, we will get some discussion going on the skill sets of curricula. But before we start talking about planning curriculum changes, revising curriculum, or implementing curriculum (three of the pillars of skills for a great education administrator, in my humble opinion), let's start our discussion on grading curriculum. I propose that we evaluate curriculum against a set of core competencies that define a quality curriculum that, in other words, gets an A!

Here is what I think a curriculum should do and do well:

• Communication skills
  • Incorporates various ways of delivery (multimodal) including new technologies and use of community resources.
  • Is based on expertise in the subject area and leaves room for the incorporation of new discoveries and theories that are generally accepted by experts.
  • Builds in methods of student feedback attempting to take in the varying students' needs and abilities - intellectual, social, emotional and physical are found in a quality curriculum.
• Decision-making skills
  • Is open to delivery interpretation and considers new research on proven teaching methods and how students learn best.
  • Anticipates and provides for the needs of the future by considering the changes and developments in society - such as trends in employment and social behavior.
  • Demonstrates that decision making is, like learning, a process, thus ensuring that each course provides a foundation of knowledge for successful learning in subsequent courses.
• Interpersonal skills
  • Does the curriculum build in methods of interpersonal skill development time--small group discussions, group projects? Or does the curriculum define the appropriate level of professional/personal development at which the skills are to be acquired?
  • Does the curriculum you are evaluating expose its participants to a variety of/accommodate learning in different environments?
  • Wouldn't it be nice if curricula understood that they are ultimately a public benefit and should incorporate values of good citizenship and respect for different languages and cultures?
• Lifelong learning
  • A quality curriculum integrates how the study of this subject contributes to student personal growth and development.
  • A curriculum understands that it is one small cog and must develop skills that are necessary for success in learning a subject.
  • Outcome measures of a curriculum reflect the essential knowledge, skills and attitudes that students need to be well-prepared for future learning and the world of work.

I'd use this qualitative assessment. What about you? What would you add or subtract?

A curriculum is a funny thing, isn't it? It's just like you and me; it can be in good shape, or it can be in bad shape. Without the right personal trainer, my body starts to lose shape; with the right trainer, I become shapely. The curriculum is the same thing; it needs the right trainers implementing it. By definition, a curriculum is a course of study: an integrated course of academic studies. This doesn't mean much by itself, so let's talk more about how we can figure out what shape your curricula are in.

When I was first offered the position as President of Professional Fitness Institute, my first question was, "What shape is the curriculum in?" Maybe I should have asked if I was in good enough shape to lead the company, but that was an afterthought. What I was really trying to ask with only one question was, are the learning outcomes articulated; what intellectual skills are required for the student and the worker; what attributes are significant in the learning of the student and the worker; what processes do the students learn or perform; who is accountable for the outcomes; and do the students learn?

At PFI, we focus on the four skills of success throughout the entire curriculum. We focus on:

1. communication skills
2. decision-making skills
3. interpersonal skills
4. lifelong learning

We weave them throughout the curriculum so our students can focus on being a productive worker for their lifetime and not just at their next job. But becoming a great worker is what we are all about, so - what shape is your curriculum in?

One way to assess what shape your curriculum is in is to drill down on the questions that I posed earlier. First, you have to know who your people are because a curriculum is nothing without people; so do your people go over the learning outcomes with the students before they start the program? Before each class? Before each course? And are the learning outcomes congruent with the jobs and activities? Does your school and the various curricula it delivers articulate the skills and attributes that make a successful "whatever job position" out of your students on a regular basis? As they start new processes or old processes for the students, do they assess the students before and after they learn the process? Finally, I know that we all have to meet the standards of our accrediting body, but who is really accountable for the quality of the curriculum, for the quantity of the curriculum?

So, what shape is your curriculum in? Let me know. dswalve@pf-institute.com