Private Career Schools Frequently Asked Questions. Designing a Curriculum for My Career School

Transcription

1 Private Career Schools Frequently Asked Questions Designing a Curriculum for My Career School

2 Contents Notices and disclaimers Designing a curriculum for my career school Has the Department adopted a standard curriculum model for career schools? Where can I find information about using the Worldwide Instructional Design System (WIDS) model to design my curriculum? What are the elements of a curriculum in the WIDS model? What are core abilities? What are standards? What is a competency? Notices and disclaimers This document was designed to provide technical assistance to career school owners, personnel, and students. It contains a general summary of applicable laws and policies, as well as educational and informative entries. Although the material contained in this document was reviewed carefully prior to publication, it does not, and cannot, address every situation that can arise in the career school context. When dealing with specific matters involving a career school, readers should conduct their own research and analysis, and obtain the assistance of appropriate professionals. The Oregon Department of Education does not provide legal advice or counsel. To obtain legal advice or counsel, to determine the legality of a matter, or to protect or enforce their legal rights, readers will need to obtain the services of private legal counsel. It is the policy of the State Board of Education, and a priority of the Oregon Department of Education, that there will be no discrimination or harassment on the grounds of race, color, sex, marital status, religion, national origin, age, or disability in any educational programs, activities, or employment. Persons having questions about equal opportunity and nondiscrimination should contact the Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction at the Oregon Department of Education, 255 Capitol St. NE, Salem, Oregon 97310; phone: (503) ; fax: (503) ; or TDD: (503)

3 Designing a curriculum for my career school Has the Department adopted a standard curriculum model for career schools? Yes, it has. The Department has adopted the Worldwide Instructional Design System (WIDS), a curriculum model designed by the Wisconsin Technical College System specifically for schools offering career and technology education. The WIDS model incorporates best-practices for career education and training. The WIDS curriculum model offers benefits to both our career schools and their students. It helps schools focus on identifying the skills their students must master, as well as how they will teach and assess those skills. It also helps them avoid common problems, such as teaching subjects that are not assessed, or unrelated to the scope of training offered or to the profession that students were training to enter. Using the WIDS curriculum model helps career schools offer instructional programs of high quality, and ensures that students are receiving a high quality education in exchange for the thousands of dollars they pay in tuition and fees. Where can I find information about using the Worldwide Instructional Design System (WIDS) model to design my curriculum? We have posted the materials from our WIDS Instructional Design training on our website. There are ten chapters available for download as Microsoft Word files. You ll find them by clicking on the Opening a New School link and scrolling to the bottom of the Opening a New School webpage. Our staff is also available to provide some assistance and answer your questions. Depending on the amount of assistance you desire or require, we may recommend or require that you obtain the assistance of a curriculum design specialist. We do not maintain a list of such specialists and cannot recommend any specific specialists to you. You may be able to find a curriculum design specialist by contacting your local education service district or community college, by asking another career school in your area, by checking the Yellow Pages, or by looking online. What are the elements of a curriculum in the WIDS model? Your curriculum should: Identify the core abilities (i.e., soft skills), standards, and competencies in your curriculum; Include learning objectives that break major skills into smaller, easier to grasp pieces and provide a way for your students to measure their progress towards achieving a competency; Identify how you will assess your students performance; Describe the learning activities you ll use in your instruction; Include the learning plans your teachers will use when instructing; and Include the syllabus your students will receive when they begin a new program or course. Page 23 of 63

4 For more information, review the instructional design training materials posted on our website. What are core abilities? Core abilities are those soft skills that are necessary to be generally successful in a variety of careers. They are commonly sought by employers, regardless of where you work. These soft skills are transferable to many different jobs and not unique to any one particular field. For example, be punctual and communicate effectively are soft skills that are necessary for success in many occupations, are commonly sought by employers, and aren t specific to any one job. When drafting your core abilities, make sure that they (1) address a single skill or subject, (2) are broad in scope, and (3) are transferable to many different jobs. Core abilities that don t address any skills, or address more than one skill, or are applicable only to one occupation, will not be accepted and will have to be rewritten. You probably won t teach a class on any specific core ability; instead, your core abilities will be woven throughout your entire program. They will support and enforce other concepts you teach. In a nursing program, you may highlight the importance of good hygiene by teaching students about sanitation procedures and how to stop the spread of germs, as well as having them assist in cleaning medical equipment. A tax preparer program could highlight the importance of punctuality by teaching about filing deadlines, having a strict attendance policy, and subtracting points from a student s score when his or her work is turned in late. Example: The PCS School s cosmetology program wants to adopt the following core ability: develop a greener, infection free, and safety conscious hair salon. There are two things wrong with this proposed core ability. First, it has three subjects rather than one. Second, it s focused on a single occupation rather than being addressed to a broad selection of occupations. The school can rewrite this draft core ability to easily fix these issues. To start, the school needs to break it down into three separate core abilities focused on environmental awareness, sanitation, and safety. Then, rather than focusing those abilities on work that happens in a hair salon, they should be written broadly and without referring to a specific industry. The final product could be be environmentally aware, use good hygiene, and maintain a safe work place. These three core abilities all address a single subject or skill and are broad in scope. What are standards? In the WIDS instructional design model, standards reflect the requirements and criteria someone in your field must satisfy. They are often established by an external source, like a state agency, a national professional association, or an accrediting body. For example, the Board of Cosmetology, Oregon Health Licensing Agency, has adopted administrative rules that define the scope of practice for an individual with a barbering Page 24 of 63

5 license. The board s rules establish requirements with which a barber licensee must comply. They tell a barber what he or she must do, may do, and cannot do, as well as the level of performance or quality expected. An acceptable standard, for purposes of the WIDS instructional model, will identify the requirements and criteria your students must satisfy, and how well they must perform that particular task. Example: The PCS School wants to offer a culinary arts program. There isn t a state agency that licenses chefs, but chefs do have to comply with statutes and administrative rules regarding sanitation and equipment. After looking at those requirements, and those established by the county health inspector and the Oregon Restaurant Association, the school has adopted seven standards for their culinary program, including maintain a sanitary and well maintained kitchen to secure the safety of prepared meals. This standard reflects requirements that a kitchen must be sanitary and regularly maintained, and sets the criteria by which a student s performance of this standard will be judged. The kitchen must be well maintained and sufficiently sanitary and maintained to secure the safety of prepared meals. What is a competency? For purposes of the WIDS instructional design model, competencies describe the skills being taught as part of an instructional program in terms of performance. They are derived from the program s standards and create a framework for organizing and implementing an instructional program. A competency should address a single act or action. Because they are fashioned in terms of performance, competencies need to describe what it is that your students need to be able to do and the level at which they should be performing. Competencies also need to be both measurable and observable. Since competencies address actions, they ll begin with an action word, a verb. But it can t just be any verb, like hold in hold the skillet. It has to be a verb that shows the student is learning and doing, rather than just comprehending or mimicking what you do. To help you, we ve provided lists of common verbs used in writing competencies. They re in the instructional design materials available on the licensing unit s website. Look for the section on Bloom s Taxonomy. That ll show you the common verbs classified into different categories. When using verbs from the Bloom s Taxonomy section, you should only use those verbs that are in the application category or a higher category. Verbs found in the categories below the application category show that the student only comprehends what you re teaching, not that they re actually learning. Competencies tell students what it is they should be able to do with their learned knowledge and the level at which they should be performing. The task your students are performing should be observable and measurable against some established standard of quality. Page 25 of 63

6 Example: One of the standards for the PCS School s culinary arts program is maintain a sanitary and well maintained kitchen to secure the safety of prepared meals. The school has to write the competencies for that standard. The first one might be demonstrate equipment maintenance according to manufacturer s recommendations, and the second might be implement Oregon Culinary Schools Association standards of sanitation. These two competencies tell students about the tasks they should be able to do with their learned knowledge (demonstrate equipment maintenance and implement standards of sanitation), the level of quality or performance required (manufacturer s recommendations and Oregon Culinary Schools Association sanitation standards), are observable (you can observe the students as they maintain the equipment and sanitize the kitchen, and the results of their work), and measurable (you can compare a student s maintenance of a stove to the manufacturer s recommendations for maintaining that stove and you can track whether a student has sanitized the kitchen according to the association s standards). Page 26 of 63