Career and technical educators face frequent requests from their industry partners to build the professional skills of their graduates but tend to respond by providing only brief activities outside the classroom which focus mostly on resume writing and job interview preparation. This approach, while practical, misses an opportunity to deepen students’ opportunities to develop the important skills and mindsets that will contribute to their career success as much as their technical competency.
To broaden technical students’ access to developing their professional skills, Project GOALS (Greater Opportunities to Advance Lifelong Success) brought together education researchers and educators to co-design and test instructional resources for developing skills and mindsets such as communication, teamwork, initiative, and openness to lifelong learning.
With funding from the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education program, Project GOALS was tested over four academic terms in multiple classes in three technical fields: advanced manufacturing, automotive, and computer-aided design. This work has produced a downloaded instructor handbook, student handbook, rubrics, and reflection tools that may be used with a mobile phone. While teaching such non-technical skills can seem challenging to fit into a packed technical course, our study showed that instructors can integrate a few focused activities into lectures and labs and, in doing so, prepare students to develop basic awareness of the importance of these skills.
See some of the preliminary resources on the Project GOALs website.
See More News