EDC and four collaborating community colleges are completing the program "Information Technology Across Careers (ITAC)-Phase Three." This is a program improvement project focusing on core Information Technology skills needed by "IT enabled" workers across all industry sectors. The primary audience for this effort is community and technical college faculty. This project is the final step of a three-phased initiative to develop a common approach to the learning the IT applications across the 16 career clusters identified by the U.S. Department of Education; and to provide tools, processes and examples to support faculty as they integrate core IT skills into their curriculum and programs.
These tools have been found to be valuable and useful to improve education and diversity pedagogy. The projects of IT Across Career Clusters (ITAC 1 and ITAC 2) developed the partnerships, framework and tested the process with ten career clusters. Through these investments EDC, with faculty teams from 10 community colleges, have developed a common language defining "IT applications" and curricular framework shared across the clusters for teaching IT applications skills; worked with business partners to draft authentic examples of IT use in performing routine tasks and solving problems in various industry settings; developed and piloted scenario-based lessons that can be used by faculty and students across the country to develop core IT skills used by IT enabled workers within various careers; and shared reflections, lessons learned, tools and resources with community college faculty nationally as part of a national resource for IT education.
This project is extending the previous ITAC projects to the remaining 6 career clusters - Information Technology, Business/Management/Administration, Finance, Government/Public Administration, Human Services, Marketing/Sales/Service. The team is reviewing and updating tools and rubrics, adding new skill sets and topics in response to the changing expectations of core "IT user" competence (e.g. laptop and home network security, and basic web design). The project is placing special emphasis on developing and implementing a targeted marketing plan to ensure that the ATE community is familiar with and has access to the resources developed through this initiative for all 16 career clusters/program areas.
By completing and distributing these instructional resources through the participating networks and associations, these materials are already reaching beyond the intended ATE audience to other community college faculty, and to the teachers/administrators in secondary and post secondary career and technical education programs.
