How Will You Know if Your Students are 21st Century Ready?

This presentation and accompanying handouts from the first Workshop on Assessment of 21st Century Skills, given by Deborah Boisvert from Broadening Advanced Technological Education Connections​ (BATEC), reflects on work with employers to define, teach, and assess 21st century skills of computer technicians. The presentation details the results of BATEC's research into 21st century skills. Findings from the BATEC Information Technology Workforce Skills Study drive this presentation, followed by information about their efforts to assess the skills desired by industry. The first handout, BATEC’s Collaborative Process of Bringing Industry Voices into Classrooms, presents how BATEC elicits industry input and evaluation of the appropriateness and effectiveness of 21st Century skills integration into the curriculum. The second handout, 21st Century Skills Checklist: BATEC Faculty Survey, asks faculty to rate the importance of 22 skills to both industry and to their courses. The third handout is a summary of findings from BATEC's Information Technology Workforce Skills Study.