Inside Higher Education
August 12, 2009
I ran across this article a few month’s ago and as I near completion of this course I felt a need to revisit the article from an assessment frame of mind. Kellogg Community College made the change from traditional credential-specific educational model to a skills-specific model—as one commenter coined the concept a “skills-centric” model.
The article delineates the case of outcomes-based assessment being driven by the needs of local industry. These needs are changing how skills development is delivered by a local community college. Kellogg Community College’s implementation of a skills training concept has totally shut down traditional classroom instruction in favor of a module-based system breaking down training into 1200 individual skill sets. Modules are sold to students or their sponsoring employer in fractions of a credit hour. An example was cited of one module on learning how to read a micrometer being worth .13 credit hours..
As a former business owner, these types of skills-based module trainings would have been much more palatable cost-wise as a pay-as-you-need training system. The executive manager of a tool manufacturer stated “The major difference is the Kellogg students did work focused on particular kinds of equipment, so that the things they learned in class they could apply immediately at work the next day”.
The next few years could be interesting if this type of model becomes the norm in community college training programs.
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