UNEVOC U.S. Centre on Education and Training for Employment

The Center on Education and Training for Employment (CETE) is the first UNEVOC Network member in the USA. CETE engages with state, national, and international clients from education, governmental agencies, organized labor, and public and private entities to:

• Generate knowledge useful for understanding workforce development;
• Develop, implement, and evaluate workforce development programs and policies that are informed by best practices and research;
• Develop workforce development leaders who serve in a variety of roles and contexts; and
• Provide technical assistance in ways that will positively influence the actions of educational professionals, organization managers, and scholars involved in developing the current and future global workforce.

As a university-based research and development centre, CETE has access to the foremost authorities on workforce development and related fields to fulfil its mission.

The Centre conducts seminars institutes to train persons to be facilitators of the DACUM process. DACUM job/occupational analysis process (DACUM stands for “Developing a Curriculum”) has proven to be a best practice example for many reasons. It has been demonstrated as being a very effective, quick, and low-cost process for use at the secondary and especially at the postsecondary levels. It is a way of involving business and industry in a substantive way to answer the question of “What should be taught in TVET programmes?”

DACUM meets the needs of industry by directly involving expert workers from any job or occupational area to accurately specify the tasks (competencies) needed by employers, and it can be used with skilled, technical, supervisory, and management positions, usually eliciting strong support from the employers for the training programme.

The DACUM process has been used by educators in over 40 countries. It is a very effective way of involving practitioners who are expert at what they do to identify the knowledge, skills and behaviours that should be taught to TVET students. Due to the involvement of local employees, it customizes the curriculum to their needs.

Teaching what really should be taught has a very positive influence on providing demand-driven knowledge, skills, and behaviours, hence increasing the student’s chance of employment and success in the workplace.

A second process that the CETE has used with much success is the SCID (Systematic Curriculum and Instructional Development) process. This week-long workshop process takes trainees through conducting training needs analysis, task verification, task selection, task analysis, clustering tasks into competencies, and the development of learner-centred, competency-based instructional materials. The materials developed usually include learning guides (modules) and job aids. Each participant is individually mentored to develop an instructional package on a task or competency of his/her choosing. The last day of the workshop is devoted to a discussion of program implementation and evaluation procedures.

A third process that has worked well and has been used extensively is competency assessment development and a Webxam online delivery system. Using blueprints from a job/occupational and task analysis, assessment tests are developed for measuring student competency attainment and certification. The assessments developed are written, reviewed, and validated by subject-matter experts who are highly regarded in their fields under the guidance of trained staff members.

Our experience includes the development of objective and performance-based assessments for programmes related to a wide array of careers. An online assessment delivery system is used because of its numerous advantages over paper-pencil systems such as: security, immediate feedback, and various reporting options.

The Webxam system is being used to administer state-wide exams that assess student knowledge in Ohio’s TVET programmes and also hosts exams for certification programs nationwide.

A common examination is a 100-item multiple-choice end-of-program exam, but a series of shorter modular exams (20 to 30 items) can be designed to use as material and is covered throughout a two-year occupational programme.

The Centre conducts Test Development Workshops to train TVET educators to use job analysis information to create assessments.

Links

UNESCO-UNEVOC U.S. Centre on Education and Training for Employment (UNEVOC Network Online Directory)

Contact

Robert E. Norton, DACUM/SCID/PBTT Program Director, Center on Education and Training for Employment, The Ohio State University, norton.1(at)osu.edu