Students Need Job Skills Both Hard and Soft

In the view of one university president, higher-education institutions need to incorporate more soft skills into formal instruction in order to better prepare well-rounded students for the work world after graduation.

“Critical thinking, complex problem solving, empathy, creativity, and communication skills are all necessary in today’s work environment,” Gloria Cordes Larson, president of Bentley University, said in an email exchange with Inside Higher Education. “This is why more and more schools are finding creative ways to integrate the arts and sciences with professional and technical skills. Employers are point-blank telling us they need college graduates who have mastered soft skills in addition to the hard, industry-specific technical skills.”

Larson said college classes should give students more practical experience—through internships, immersion classes with corporations, community service, or other means—and introduce them to technologies relevant in their chosen fields, but “it all begins with an approach that combines left-brain and right-brain thinking.”

She noted that Bentley and other universities offer programs designed to enable students to major in both business/technical fields and liberal-arts studies, which helps them develop analytical and communication skills.

Getting first-year students involved in campus career services right away, rather than waiting until their senior year when they’re starting to apply for jobs, is also important, she stressed.

National U. Rethinking Personalized Learning

National University, a California-based nonprofit that primarily enrolls adults students, has launched a $20 million, four-year project to create a personalized learning platform that combines adaptive learning, competency-based education learning (CBE), and predictive analytics. The goal is to use the new platform in 20 general-education courses by next year.

The three elements would combine in courseware that would adjust to each student’s abilities and progress, while providing data to track that progress for faculty, advisors, and the students. Incorporating CBE will make it possible to drop conventional grading and divide the course and its credits into skills the students have mastered.

As part of the project, National has also established a research-and-development department to support faculty members and will make its research available to the public.

“How do we create a university that truly tries to adapt to the needs of its students?” asked National’s president, David Andrews. “We have to have a better model for serving adults.”

Fitting all the pieces into one cohesive platform won’t be easy. Getting the CBE portion right could be the biggest challenge because it requires approval from accreditors. Providing financial aid may also prove troublesome, in the view of some industry observers.

“There’s a huge risk that you don’t understand the problem. Will they truly learn and adjust as they go along?” said Phil Hill, co-publisher of the e-Literate blog, about designing academic programs around adult learners. But he also added, “It’s definitely interesting. It’s a relatively large university that appears to be going all in on personalized learning.”

Higher Ed's Dual Role: Jobs and Mental Prep

Some say colleges and universities should do more to prepare students for specific jobs. Others feel higher education should continue its traditional role in developing intellectual, analytical, and critical thinking.

There are still others, such as the new president of Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania, who believe both functions are important. In an opinion piece for The Washington Post, Christopher B. Howard stressed that institutions need to ensure “students graduate with skills relevant for today’s workforce and an education that prepares them for an increasingly complex and unpredictable world.”

Howard doesn’t see universities morphing into trade schools, but does acknowledge that more need to partner with corporations to make sure classroom instruction remains relevant to current business needs and also to provide real-world experience to students.

A panel of speakers at the International Seminar on Innovation in Higher Education, held in Mexico in September, concurred with Howard’s view. “We do both,” agreed Richard Legon, president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges in the U.S., in a report for University World News. “We prepare citizens for the future, and we prepare folks who have the capacity to think and learn and add value on the job.”

Legon said it’s the responsibility of college and university governing boards, because their members are not part of academia, to promote the value of higher education and also to encourage more innovation on higher-ed campuses.

Innovators Push for Changes in Higher Ed

To those who don’t work on a college or university campus or in a related field, the term “higher education” often conjures up moldering institutions stuck in an outdated time warp, unwilling to change. But, many schools are indeed trying new things to help their students succeed and to ensure more people can afford a college education.

Washington Monthly profiled 16 leaders in higher ed—not presidents or chancellors, but administrators and academics at schools, government agencies, and nonprofits—who have helped lead the charge in innovation in postsecondary education and access.

“These front-line innovators don’t always have a lot of power,” wrote Gilad Edelman. “So when they try to advocate for new and better ways of serving students, they are typically pushing against resistant leadership, indifferent or threatened colleagues, and a general institutional inertia that makes progress painfully slow.”

The people highlighted in “The Sixteen Most Innovative People in Higher Education” are responsible for programs that support potential dropouts, encourage students to graduate within four years, enable students to take online courses at a lower cost, admit more low-income students, and use technology to monitor student progress and intervene when necessary.

Other programs focus on competency-based education, remedial course requirements, student advising and mentoring, open educational resources, and student-success coaching.

VR 'Class' Tests New Teachers' Skills

Theory is fine, but practice makes perfect. With that in mind, education students at Stonehill College in Massachusetts are gaining hands-on experience in lesson presentation and classroom management, but without inflicting their still-wobbly skills on youngsters.

The Stonehill students are using a new immersive-training platform to practice their teaching in a virtual-reality simulation classroom. A grant from the Massachusetts Department of Education and the platform developer, Mursion, are paying for the technology.

The students deliver a sample lesson, as they would in a physical classroom, except that their simulated “pupils” appear on a video screen, similar to characters in a video game or animated movie. The pupils are programmed to react in real time to the student-teachers’ directions, and just like their counterparts in an actual class, they don’t always do exactly what they’re told.

“Students say it is stressful, but also beneficial to them,” said Kathy McNamara, education department chair, in a Stonehill release about the program. “They get feedback before they actually have to go into the classroom. It is insightful for them to see classroom life unfold. When they react to students, they see how and why it resulted in a particular outcome. They usually do about six or seven minutes and they’ll tell you it feels like an eternity.”

Other students can also watch and discuss how the simulation went. Mursion has also created simulations for team teaching and parent-teacher conferences.

Stonehill is among a number of teacher-training programs testing the Mursion system.

The Potential of Microsoft Buying LinkedIn

There’s been plenty of speculation on the reasons why Microsoft would bid $26 billion to acquire the social-networking service LinkedIn, with most focused on the considerable short-term benefits. The long-term possibilities may be even more important, according to a report for Quartz.

Microsoft’s Office Suite is already a dominating force in the productivity-tool market. By adding LinkedIn to its portfolio, Microsoft could position itself to not only have the products that help employees do their jobs, but also provide educational resources to help them get hired.

“Microsoft can drive the evolution of the competency marketplace in ways LinkedIn as a standalone company couldn’t,” said Ryan Craig, managing director of University Ventures, a private equity fund focused on the higher-ed sector. “They can offer a complete human-resources solution.”

LinkedIn already makes two-thirds of its revenue through solutions for HR departments and tools that deliver leads to salespeople. LinkedIn also owns Lynda.com, an online education platform that provides skills training.

“One could imagine a much bigger role for LinkedIn as competency-based education goes mainstream,” Joshua Kim wrote in his Insider Higher Education technology blog. “The switch from time-based to skill-based credentialing will be hugely important for some (although not all) sectors of higher education. LinkedIn has the potential to combine professional networking with just-in-time training and alternative credentialing.”

Universities Launch Microcredentials Platform

Six universities have teamed to launch the University Learning Store, a platform that will help job seekers and working professionals earn microcredentials in business and technical fields.

Learners will have to prove their knowledge through verified, hands-on assessments as measures of competencies to earn a microcredential, according to a report in eCampus News. In addition, learners can choose to combine microcredentials to earn larger certification from an institution.

“Although an array of nondegree credentials exist, they can leave employers guessing at their true value,” said David Schejbal, dean of the University of Wisconsin-Extension, one of the founding institutions of the project. “With the University Learning Store, leading institutions have joined forces to introduce credentials that clearly indicate the capabilities of the credential holder.”

Microcredentials, available as a printable certificate or digital badge, can be added to a student’s resume after successfully completing an assessment. Courses on the University Learning Store site cost $50-$150, but are currently being offered at half-price for a limited time. Each credential can be earned in days or weeks.

“This is an innovation in skill credentialing that the workforce, and higher ed, has not seen before,” said Nelson Baker, dean of Georgia Tech Professional Education. “At Georgia Tech, we bring the same rigor and real-world applicability to our nondegree educational opportunities as we do other programs. Industry validation is the final frontier of proving the value of lifelong learning.”

CBE Is Not Only About Technology

The competency-based education (CBE) model can provide flexibility and accessibility to personalized learning while allowing some students to complete their studies in much less time than the traditional on-campus model. Technology helps make it possible, but it can’t be the end of the conversation.

Technology makes it easier to engage students, puts content in front of learners at the moment it can be most effective, and measures when they are ready to move to the next level. However, the content and educator are still at the center of the learning experience, according to an article in eCampus News.

A focus on content first enables technology to be used to provide information to the learner. Then, technology can provide the assessment tools necessary to understand how students engage with the material.

“CBE today is redefining the delivery of education, providing new learning opportunities that place value on the skills and knowledge a student has gained through their life experience outside of the classroom, or in prior classrooms throughout their learning journey,” wrote Jade Roth, CEO of Flat World Education. “It can remove some of the roadblocks that have stood in the way of their education. To truly serve those students, we must always remember why they are there: not to try our new technology, but to build the knowledge and skills they need to achieve their professional and personal goals.”

Regulatory Roadblock for CBE

There are still challenges ahead for competency-based education (CBE), but none may be bigger than the one from the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General. Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, said he believes the critical audit from the Office is preventing more CBE programs from being developed in higher education.

The audit criticized the way the Higher Learning Commission considered proposals for new CBE credentials. The inspector general panned the way the commission approved programs based on “regular and substantive” interaction between faculty and students.

“I, along with many others, have pointed out numerous times that this particular regulation makes little sense in today’s world of emerging online, competency-based programs—and we should instead be moving toward outcomes-based judgments around institutions,” Horn wrote  in a column for CompetencyWorks. “But the friction is also entirely predictable as competency-based education simply does not fit into the traditional value network and associated regulatory structures of higher education.”

Evaluating CBE programs using the same metrics employed to assess on-campus programs just doesn’t work, according to Horn, particularly when it comes to online interaction between students and faculty. The issues will eventually be worked out, but students who could benefit from CBE now will have moved on.

“At a high level, the solutions to these problems both have challenges today,” Horn wrote. “One is to stay out of the government funding streams, as some online, competency-based programs have tried but struggled to do, or to try to launch a more systematic effort at reform through a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act—an effort that will not be an easy climb with the various lobbying factions that will support the existing orders and thus would likely try to stifle innovation.”

ED Report Critical of CBE Credentialing

More than 600 colleges and universities are either in the design phase or already offer competency-based (CBE) credentials, according to a September report in Inside Higher Education. That work may be in jeopardy following the critical audit of CBE issued by the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Education (ED).

The inspector general’s office, which works independently of ED, has raised concerns in its last two audits of the credential review process. The audit was critical of the way the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the largest regional accreditor, considered college proposals for CBE credentialing. It also questioned the level of interaction between instructors and students.

In 2014, the inspector general’s audit criticized approval of direct-assessment degrees. It also questioned the faculty’s role in CBE credentialing and worried about low-quality providers. That prompted HLC to freeze approval of degrees last year and the Department of Education to issue more guidance on CBE.

“I, along with many others, have pointed out numerous times that this particular regulation makes little sense in today’s world of emerging online, competency-based programs—and we should instead be moving toward outcomes-based judgments around institutions,” Michael B. Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, wrote in a column that appeared in CompetencyWorks. “But the friction is also entirely predictable, as competency-based education simply does not fit into the traditional value network and associated regulatory structures of higher education.”

On the heels of the critical audit, ED announced a series of executive actions aimed at strengthening the overall accreditation system. The department will make public the standards every accreditor uses to evaluate student outcomes. Accreditors will have to submit letters that are sent to colleges and universities when the institutions are put on probation and also highlight data such as student graduation rates, debt levels, and postgraduation earnings, according to a report in U.S. News & World Report.

College Partners with Library for Credentialing

A new college/library partnership in Carson City, NV, could illustrate the type of postsecondary program likely to become more common, as higher education institutions attempt to overturn criticism about costs, length of time to finish studies, and preparation for employment.

Working with the Manufacturing Skills Institute (MSI) in Richmond, VA, the Carson City Public Library and Western Nevada College (WNC) recently launched a joint program for earning credentials in manufacturing technology. The Manufacturing Technician I credential is endorsed by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Nevada Manufacturers Association, so those who achieve it are much more apt to get a good job.

The program isn’t aimed at traditional college students—the target audience is recent high school graduates, people returning from military service, and those already working in lower-level manufacturing positions—but participants can earn 10 credit hours in applied industrial technology from WNC as part of their studies. If they want, they can continue to pursue courses at WNC while working.

The program is conducted online, enabling students to fit studies around work hours. Students can take assessment tests at any time during the semester so it’s possible to speed up completion.

The library serves as an assessment center and certified trainer, the first authorized by MSI. Labs are held at the library to supplement the online classwork. The library also provides computer training and instruction in the software applications students must use in order to take the online courses.

Need-based scholarships are available for those who can’t afford the fees.

Students Need Hands-On Experience

Experts expect the demand for employees in professional, scientific, and technical service fields to rise nearly 30% over the next five years. On-the-job training and apprenticeship programs will play an important role in addressing this need, but students must master both theory and application.

It’s up to higher-education administrators and faculty to develop standards to prepare technical workers for the future while ensuring that a technical education is a well-rounded engaging experience, according to Jeff Ylinen, provost of Dunwoody College of Technology, Minneapolis, MN, in a column for eCampus News.

“In more standard educational models, students first build a foundation of theory and then, later in their degree program, apply that theory through specific coursework and internships,” Ylinen wrote. “We’ve found that by flipping this model and immersing our students from day one in real-world environments and workplace situations, they more quickly develop a body of experience and contextual understanding of specialist technical environments that make the learning of theory far more relevant and successful.”

On-campus training centers can provide the hands-on learning students need to prepare for apprenticeships and employment. Such centers do require an investment from the institution, but the return is students who gain valuable experience and meet industry expectations.

“Creating opportunities for students to not only become familiar with emerging materials and new technologies, but also to physically work with them and understand their properties and parameters, creates a far greater degree of knowledge currency and job readiness postgraduation and increases students’ excitement over the direction their chosen fields are pursuing,” Ylinen wrote.

Network Maps Pathway to Careers

Eight states have joined forces to find the best ways to help connect high school students to a postsecondary education that leads to a full-time job. The Pathways to Prosperity Network is trying to develop a “gold-standard model” for states to use, identifying lessons learned and policy recommendations that are useful, according to a report in eCampus News.

The State Progress Report 2012-14, released by Jobs for the Future and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, found that while job availability differs from region to region, the health-care industry, information and computer science, and advanced manufacturing are areas of growth in all eight states and only require two-year degrees.

The report noted that career information should be provided to students in middle school. It also found that important “levers” in each participating state included work-based learning experiences; allowing students to earn college credits in high school; bringing together employers, high school, and community colleges to provide work-based learning opportunities; and creating cross-sector state leadership teams to make work-based learning opportunities possible.

“The states we are working with are committed to destroying once and for all the old notion that some kids need to prepare for college while others are being prepared for careers,” said Robert Schwartz, who helps lead the network. “They understand that, in the 21st century, all young people need to be prepared both for some form of further education and a career.”

National Study Eyes Competency-Based Ed

As interest grows in competency-based education (CBE), planning is underway for the largest survey to date of institutions using CBE programs and for a national conference on the topic this fall. The effort, led by the nonprofit research organization Public Agenda, will help institutions plan and develop CBE degrees, certificates, and other postsecondary credentials, according to a report in eCampus News.

Research on models and trends in CBE is being conducted to create a publicly available online source of information. In addition, research-based design elements of CBE programs and online tools will be made available to institutions interested in building a program.

The survey of institutions with CBE programs will be presented at the CBExchange, Sept. 30-Oct. 2, in Phoenix, AZ. The purpose of the study was to collect data on programs already in use, gauge the practices and design elements of those programs, and measure the importance of those elements to each institution.

A free CBE online resource is also set to launch in the fall, housed on the Competency Based Education Network (C-BEN).

“As competency-based education gains momentum nationwide, there is a growing need for resources that will help interested colleges and universities develop thoughtful plans that lead to quality progams,” said Alison Kadlec, senior vice president and director of higher education and workforce programs at Public Agenda. “This 15-month project was designed to produce a baseline understanding of the landscape and advances in competency-based education and help inform various higher-education stakeholders.”

Apprenticeships Making a Comeback

The concept of people learning a trade from a skilled employer may be about to make a big comeback. The Obama administration announced a $100 million program to support apprenticeships, with a goal to double the number of apprenticeship programs in the United States over the next five years.

“Apprenticeships are dramatically underutilized in this country, and if we expand our apprenticeship system, it is a good way to help businesses meet the demand for skilled labor that labor economists have said is a concern that we should be worried about over the next 10 years,” Sarah Ayres Steinberg, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, said in an eCampus News article.

The concept is growing fastest on community college campuses. Some of the two-year schools are already working with businesses to help students gain experience and credentials, such as Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana, which offers credits to apprentices in trade programs for time spent on the job that can then be used to earn an associate degree or technical certificates. In addition, the Department of Education and the Department of Labor launched the Registered Apprenticeship College Consortium, which allows graduates to convert on-the-job training into college credits.

“Our current system of education and training is not sufficient to meet the demands for skilled labor,” Ayres Steinberg said. “We have to do something different. We have to make it easier for young people to get the postsecondary education and training that they need.”

Competency-Based Online Degree Piloted

Community colleges in the state of Washington will soon offer a competency-based associate degree in business using open educational resources (OER) for every class.

The online, self-paced classes are designed to adapt content and activities based on a student’s prior knowledge of the subject, according to a report in eCampus News. Students will also have access to free online course materials.

The 13 community colleges signed up for the pilot will work with Lumen Learning to design the courses. Lumen Learning is also collecting course material that will include textbooks, videos, and embedded assessments to gauge students’ progress.

“A motivated student could complete a two-year transfer degree in just 18 months,” said Jan Yoshiwara, deputy executive director for education for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. “All this adds up to quicker completion at a lower cost, while achieving the same learning outcomes required for traditional courses and programs.”

Report Promotes Way to Make CBE Work

Many colleges, particularly community colleges, view competency-based education (CBE) programs as a way to improve learning opportunities while lowering costs for students. One problem has been finding ways to use CBE programs in an environment dominated by the use of credit hours to reward student achievement.

The solution may lie in an integrated and transparent competency management framework, according to a report from Tyton Partners. The report, Evidence of Learning: The Case for an Integrated Competency Management System, found that colleges and universities should focus on ways that allow students to reach college and career goals and that knowledge, skills, and experience an individual achieves during their lifetime should be part of the process.

“As the bridge between students and the workforce, postsecondary institutions are uniquely positioned to find and deliver the best tools and resources to capture and communicate evidence of learning,” Adam Newman, co-founder and managing partner at Tyton said in an article for eCampus News. “Colleges and universities must rise to this opportunity or risk erosion of a core value proposition in linking learning and employment and lifelong development.”

The way to begin, according to the report, is for institutions and business to work together to provide students the skills that employers need. Colleges and business must also find ways to award proper credit for accumulated skills and maintain files to record that progress.

There should be ways for students to promote the skills they have already accumulated, along with access to feedback, coaching tools, and services so they can see how they are progressing. Schools need ways to evaluate that progress and employers must be willing to provide feedback to the institutions so they can adequately prepare their students.

“There’s no quick fix to this,” Newman said. “Institutions need to think internally about how connected their own departments are to one another in order to provide an effective learning experience and about whether or not outside experiences are valued. That’s the first wave of this: Institution-centric discussion.”

Badges Part of CBE Degree Program

Competency-based education (CBE) matches workplace skills with a formal degree program, normally using digital badges to confirm the skills and abilities a learner has acquired. Brandman University, a private nonprofit institution, is helping its students use the badges they earn through its online CBE program more effectively.

Brandman partnered with Credly, an online platform for managing the credentials, to provide students with a way to share badges. The badges link back to the issuing source and deliver data about the criteria and issuer, giving the credential context for LinkedIn profiles, talent-management systems, e-portfolios, social networks, online communities, and websites.

“Employers inform us that there is a need to validate the skill set of business students and graduates,” said Gary Brahm, chancellor of Brandman University, in a press release. “Digital badges will arm our students with a form of professional capital that has immediate value in the workplace.”

Brandman is approved by the U.S. Department of Education to award financial aid to CBE students and is the first institution to issue digital badges certifying skills as students work through their degree-based program. It uses the Credly Enterprise edition, a cloud-based platform to manage and display the badges.

UT Creates Mobile-First Competency Courses

The University of Texas System is taking competency-based education mobile. It is creating a new program to offer adaptive degrees and certificates aligned with industry standards and available through mobile technology developed by the UT System.

The educational pathway will be supported by a platform of technologies and services known as Total Educational Experience (TEx). The tools available in TEx can be adapted to a student’s preferences and adjusted to meet the student’s level of mastery.

“We made the decision to initially deliver TEx on mobile devices to ensure we meet students where they are, with the technology that they are used to,” said Marni Baker Stein, chief innovation officer for the Institute of Transformational Learning, which is developing the TEx program. “The experience will still be available on the web, but the mobile delivery will allow them to take their education with them wherever they go.”

The program will launch in fall 2015, offering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and medical science courses. It will be offered in online and hybrid formats available for students from high school through postgraduate levels.

TEx tools will also provide students customized advising and mentoring on career objectives. In addition, it will support teaching methods in the classroom.

“We are developing a new model of education that provides an alternative and potentially accelerated pathway to a UT-quality degree,” Baker Stein said. “Our degree and certificate programs are designed to build on critical skill sets so that students achieve enduring mastery that better prepares them for the workplace of the future.”

Nanodegrees Offer New Way for Students

Last year, Udacity promised a new path for students to earn a diploma. The online education provider is delivering on that promise by developing nanodegrees, online learning that is vocationally focused and can lead to a degree within 12 months.

Learners will acquire bite-size chucks of information through select hands-on courses with an emphasis on skills that can be applied to a job. AT&T partnered on the program, will accept the nanodegree as a credential for entry-level jobs, and has reserved 100 internships for graduates, according to a report in The New York Times.

The first nanodegrees to be offered this fall will focus on front-end web developers, back-end web developers, iOS and Android mobile developers, and data analysts. It should take a working student six to 12 months to complete the degree.

“We will teach all the necessary skills together with why those skills matter along with career guidance,” Clarissa Shen, vice president, business development and partnerships, wrote on the Udacity blog. “In other words, you won’t just learn ‘how’ to code, but also ‘why.’”