Volume 33, No. 1: Bright Horizons in 2023
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Welcome to Vol. 33, No. 1, of Connections, the newsletter of the National Career Pathways Network.
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Don’t miss this outstanding professional development opportunity for secondary and postsecondary educators, adult educators, college and career navigators, workforce development professionals, and employers. NCPN CONNECT 2023, hosted at the beautiful Harris Conference Center in Charlotte, NC, on Nov 8–10, will include:
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Inspiring Ideas
from Career Pathways across the country
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Networking
with leaders and peers
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Takeaways
you can put into action when you return home
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Attendees will choose from over 70 informative and innovative sessions presented by leaders and experts in five strands: Career Counseling, Development, and Advising • Teaching and Learning • Designing/Delivering Programs • Establishing/Growing Partnerships • Workforce Development
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Esports Is Community
PK Graff, Instructional Designer, STEM Content Specialist, Director of Gaming, Academies of Creative Education/Georgia Scholastic Esports Foundation, Brookhaven, GA
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Esports is a form of competitive video gaming where players or teams participate in organized tournaments and leagues. It has gained immense popularity in recent years and is now considered a professional sport, with players, teams, and leagues operating at a global level. Despite the common belief that video games isolate players, esports actually fosters a sense of community and helps players develop soft skills such as teamwork, communication, and leadership, which are highly valued in the job market. Additionally, esports provides opportunities for players to network with professionals in the industry, potentially leading to career opportunities in gaming and technology.
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Future of Work Project Articles Published in the Journal of Advanced Technological Education
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Over the past several months, NCPN Connections has published and/or promoted items pertaining to Preparing Technicians for the Future of Work, a project of CORD (the parent organization of NCPN) and the National Science Foundation (see here, here, and here). The project's mission—to serve the ATE community in facilitating the transformation of associate degree programs to prepare US technicians for the work of the future—resonates with the mission of NCPN. Articles stemming from the Future of Work project appear in a recent issue of The Journal of Advanced Technological Education. In “Enhanced Podcasts as Content Acquisition Tools,” Mike Lesiecki describes the benefits of podcasts as tools for increasing accessibility and engagement, for both instructors and students. The Future of Work project produced a series of 44 podcasts in which employers on the leading edge of technology in the workplace share their views. In “Building a Well-Equipped Skilled Technical Workforce by Adopting the Framework for a Cross-Disciplinary STEM Core,” Ann-Claire Anderson and colleagues describe and outline steps for the adoption of a framework for cross-disciplinary STEM skill areas that transcend narrow job specialization. The outlined steps require the participation of employers, educators, and administrators. See also “Future of Work Skills Integration with Florida Manufacturers' Technician Skill Needs,” in which Marilyn Barger and Richard Gilbert summarize a project that compared the skills needed by Florida manufacturers to the skills taught at two-year Florida colleges and mapped those skills to the skills identified by a national sampling carried out by the Future of Work project.
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Supercharge Your Pathway Program! |
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NCPN’s highly rated Career Pathways Leadership (CPL) Institutes give attendees powerful tools for implementing and supercharging seamless Career Pathways programs for secondary-postsecondary and adults. CPL institutes immerse attendees in best practices and insightful discussions based on the Advancing Credentials through Career Pathways Framework, an industry-informed approach to program implementation and oversight that focuses on employer engagement using the Business and Industry Leadership Team (BILT) model, Career Pathways programs built on industry-validated stackable credentials, and credit for prior learning and noncredit/credit integration. This summer’s institutes will take place on June 21-22 at the Wojcik Conference Center at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois. Institute segments will cover topics such as employer engagement, building community partnerships to facilitate seamless transitions, designing industry-responsive career pathways, using pathway mapping to identify and design stackable credentials, noncredit-to-credit alignment, labor market-responsive professional development, and program-to-program articulation. Registration will be open through June 9 or until capacity is reached. Space is limited, so don’t wait!
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Paying for Post-Secondary Education: No-Cost Resources from the CFPB
Leslie Jones, Youth Financial Education Analyst, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has resources students and teachers can use to support efforts to prepare and pay for post-secondary education, as well as to protect against frauds and scams associated with funding higher education. |
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(The author presented at NCPN CONNECT 2022 in Atlanta. See presentation slides here.)
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ChatGPT: What's Everybody Talking About? |
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ChatGPT is taking the world by storm, creating both optimism and dread. So, what is it?
ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI that uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses to natural language input. It has been trained on a vast amount of data and is capable of understanding and producing coherent responses to a wide range of topics. In education, ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionize the way students learn by providing personalized and interactive learning experiences. It can be used for language learning, tutoring, and even grading essays. However, there are also concerns about the potential misuse of such technology and the ethical implications of relying too heavily on AI in education.
If you’re still new to the topic (and most of us are), the following resources will get you started. (Incidentally, the preceding paragraph was written by ChatGPT in response to the prompt: “In 100 words, what is ChatGPT and how is it impacting education?")
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The Effect of Employer Understanding and Engagement on Non-Degree Credentials
Collegis Education and UPCEA, February 2023
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From the foreword: "Upskilling, reskilling, microcredentials, badges, alternative credentials, and workforce development—these are just some of the terms and buzzwords applied to short courses that are focused on skills and aligned with industry. Higher education publications are filled with information about the demand for these microcredentials, demand that is supposedly evident from students, parents, adult learners, and employers. However, the marketplace experience of many institutions offering these alternative credentials does not align with the demand suggested by the publications. You would not have to look far to find institutions that created reskilling/upskilling programs but realized only meager enrollments. Higher education institutions facing financial pressures cannot afford to fail when pursuing new opportunities such as microcredentials."
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Closing the Skills Gap 2023: Employer Perspectives on Educating the Post-Pandemic Workforce
Market Insights by Wiley, 2023
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From the introduction: "Employers and workers find themselves in a world defined by change. The COVID-19 pandemic is the driver behind many changes, from the rapid rise of flexible and remote work to sudden shifts in consumer behavior. The current economic conditions also empower skilled workers to seek increased pay and benefits, stressing many organizations’ hiring and retention capabilities. As organizations adapt to a post-pandemic world, many stumble on the skills gap—a significant disparity between the skills needed to achieve their goals and their workforce’s capabilities. We surveyed 600 human resources professionals to capture insights for addressing this challenge." |
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Tracy Chapman, Collegis Education, Oct 13, 2022. "Research shows schools consider microcredentials an important strategy for their future—and a majority of employers have indicated they would want to be approached by a college or university to develop microcredentials. However, for the unprepared launching a microcredential can be a heavy lift. Read on to find out what’s needed to successfully launch and deliver the microcredentials employers—and prospective students—want."
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Dennis Pierce, Community College Daily, March 13, 2023. "Rarely is there an opportunity for a simple policy change to create a 'win-win-win' by benefiting multiple stakeholder groups at the same time. Yet, advocates say this is the case with 'skills-based hiring,' which focuses on the actual skills and qualifications someone brings to the job instead of just the degree they’ve earned."
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Aneesh Raman and Cat Ward, Fortune, January 5, 2023. "For decades now, companies have measured candidates largely by their degrees, years of experience, and other pedigree signals as filters to determine who to hire and promote. However, the cracks in this model are becoming more apparent by the day."
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©2023 CORD. Connections is published by the National Career Pathways Network (ncpn.info), an organization of CORD (cord.org). NCPN assists educators, employers, and other stakeholders in planning, implementing, evaluating, and improving workforce education programs. Questions? Mark Whitney, mwhitney@cord.org
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