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Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you're having a wonderful day today. Today, we're going to look at college and career readiness. And for today's lesson, I've chosen a quote by Nelson Mandela which states, "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
Now, by the end of the lesson today, you are going to be able to review student preparedness for college and career and review some of the components of deeper learning, as well as examine the relationship between competency-based education and college and career readiness.
So let's go ahead and get started. First, what I'd like to do is go ahead and review current states of student preparedness. Unfortunately, these days, students are often leaving high school totally unprepared to succeed in college or in the workplace.
This is for a number of different reasons. For some, they don't really get those real-world skills within the classroom. So they're not really preparing themselves for how difficult-- or the rigors that they're going to experience when they get outside of high school and into higher education, or into the workplace.
Also, many students aren't getting those fundamental skills for the higher-order thinking. They can complete basic tasks that are required of a high school student, but they don't necessarily have those higher-order thinking skills that allow them to transfer that learning to a college or career environment.
And many students are leaving high school unprepared for college or a career, and then because of that, those who enroll in college classes often need to seek out that remedial assistance. So they need help in some of their most basic subjects. So clearly, in some areas of our education system, we're failing students in preparing themselves for what they're going to see outside of high school.
That brings us to the concept of deeper learning. Now, why is deeper learning so important when it comes to addressing college and career readiness? Well, first and foremost, deeper learning helps to promote a lot of those higher-order thinking skills, those analysis skills that we are going to need to look at, when students enter those college classrooms or when they get into the workforce.
It also helps to promote a lot of those problem-solving skills, and really, the ability for students to discover what it is that they know and don't know within their own learning styles.
Now, deeper learning is really designed to help support students at being better prepared for college and career. And as a part of that, anything that involves deeper learning, the goal or the mission behind it is based in the deeper learning core competencies. And so that's what I want to review very briefly.
Those core competencies are, first, that students master core academic content. That they learn to think critically and work collaboratively with those around them. That they're learning, really, how to communicate effectively.
And more importantly than that, they're learning how to learn. They're developing those academic mindsets so they can assess the ways in which they are learning and help to push themselves as they move from high school to college or their career.
What I'd like to do now is take a look at the relationships between competency-based education and college and career readiness. First and foremost, competency-based education provides a lot of things to students.
Competency-based education provides the opportunity for flexibility. This is flexibility in the ways that credits can be earned. This offers flexibility in the way in which students can do the learning. There are a lot of opportunities for flexibility within CBE.
Also, CBE provides that personalized learning opportunity. Students have the ability to learn not only the content that is most engaging to them, but as well as learning that content in the way that is most engaging to them.
CBE also promotes many different things when it comes to college and career readiness. CBE promotes, really, those real-world skills. So the idea that students are getting experiences, taking what they're learning in the classroom and using their higher-level thinking and reasoning to really apply it.
CBE also promotes those collaborative opportunities, the teamwork that is so necessary in the workplace these days. Students are getting that through competency-based education.
Finally-- and in some ways, most importantly-- CBE really promotes the opportunities for self-evaluation and that reflection process that students go through. These are the skills that are really needed in higher education, as well as the workplace, for students to be able to go back through what they've learned and how they can move forward.
Now that we've reached the end of this lesson, you have been able to, first, review the student preparedness for college and career when it comes to deeper learning. You've also been able to examine the relationships that are created between competency-based education, as well as college and career readiness.
Now that we've reached the end of this lesson, I want you to take just a moment to reflect on the relationships between CBE and college and career readiness. What do you think is the most important skill that CBE offers students when it comes to being ready for college or their career?
To dive a little deeper and learn how to apply this information, you want to be sure to check out the Additional Resources section associated with this video. This is where you'll find links targeted toward really helping you to discover more ways to apply this course material.
(00:00-00:15) Intro
(00:16-00:33) Objectives
(00:34-03:21) College & Career Readiness and Deeper Learning
(03:22-05:04) College & Career Readiness and CBE
(05:05-05:57) Review & Reflection
How Does Deeper Learning Prepare Students for the Future?
This is the page for the Teaching Channel Series on Deeper Learning. This series of videos, introduced by Tony Wagner, explores the significance of and methods behind deeper learning and helping students become future-ready.
https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2014/03/21/deeper-learning-preparing-students-for-the-future/
WCET Learn: Competency-based Education
WCET (WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies) is a division of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. This site is dedicated to resources and tools that demonstrate why CBE is important for college and career readiness. It highlights some innovative programs available through higher education designed around CBE, such as Capella's Flex Path Program.
http://wcet.wiche.edu/learn/issues/CBE