Posts Tagged ‘iCEV’

Advance CTE 2023 Fall Meeting Sponsor Blog: Diamond Sponsor, iCEV – 5 Steps Toward Building a Sustainable CTE Program

Friday, September 29th, 2023

As a State Career and Technical Education (CTE) leader, you know the value of CTE in preparing learners for a wide range of work opportunities. But to elevate CTE’s impact, it’s essential to use your expertise to build programs that grow and thrive.

Through our conversations with CTE champions, here are five top tips we’ve summarized that are crucial to building a sustainable CTE program.

After reviewing each strategy, you’ll be better able to pursue the Advance CTE vision of CTE Without Limits.

1. Articulate Your Purpose

Identify your purpose and goals for your state’s CTE programs from the beginning. Ensure your objectives are clearly defined so you can use them to make your decisions. Consistent focus on your core goals is essential to developing a viable program.

Once you’ve defined your goals clearly, share the program’s value with your stakeholders. Prospective learners will gain insight into how the program could benefit their future.

2. Choose Relevant Courses

A key benefit of CTE is developing skills directly applicable to real-world work. Offering the right pathways and courses to teach these skills is a huge piece of any successful program.

Stay in tune with in-demand skills across industries and which careers learners are interested in. By implementing diverse courses with transferable skills, you’ll go further in preparing the next generation of workers.

3. Pursue Professional Development

Implementing ongoing professional development opportunities keeps educators current on CTE objectives, industry knowledge, and teaching strategies.

Effective professional development can take many forms, but supporting CTE instructors with relevant and varied opportunities demonstrates your commitment to their success in the classroom.

4. Build Partnerships within the Community

Connecting with businesses in local communities can create many opportunities for learners, including internships or part-time employment.

Contact companies and express your interest in creating partnerships between their professionals and learners. Making business connections at the state level can boost opportunities for programs and learners throughout your state.

5. Evaluate Your Programs

Implementing CTE at the state level is a long-term commitment to a model that will grow and evolve in a changing world.

From the beginning, gather feedback from involved parties—educators, learners, families, and industry partners. Collecting feedback on the effectiveness of a program offers immense value to all of these stakeholders.

Utilize data to determine if your CTE program is meeting its objectives and to make informed decisions.

Finally, think about how to support learners through career and technical student organizations (CTSOs), expanded program offerings, and investments in technology. Making continual improvements statewide will lead to long-term success and sustainability.

Pursue CTE Without Limits in Your Program

When you use your expertise to build sustainable CTE programs, you can pursue the vision of CTE Without Limits and provide access to a diverse audience of learners.

But to provide a cohesive, flexible learning environment to better achieve these goals, many programs are relying on CTE data.

Visit the iCEV booth during the Advance CTE Fall Conference to learn more about how iCEV can support you in acquiring and using data to make decisions.

By Layla Alagic in Advance CTE Fall Meeting
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Digital Badges: Professional Recognition for the Modern Workforce

Monday, October 25th, 2021

Submitted by iCEV, 2021 Fall Meeting Sponsor

Skills Verification in the Digital Age

Digital badges are a powerful way to take charge of professional growth and development, and they have become a popular way for individuals to upskill and advance their careers. Businesses, schools and organizations use digital badges to provide skills verification and offer opportunities for career advancement.

Digital badges signify the learner has completed a formally approved set of standards or competencies. Learners earn badges when they complete specific tasks to prove their knowledge and skills. Earning badges is a professional way for learners to share career development experiences with others and highlight their commitment to knowledge expansion in a particular area. 

Because they are an online representation of knowledge, skills and accomplishments, digital badges provide an opportunity to promote those attributes through various channels. Digital badges can be added to email signatures and digital resumes or shared on social media platforms. A digital badge provides verifiable metadata that describes the qualifications and process required to earn the digital badge, making it easier for others to recognize the learner’s expertise and achievements.

Introducing iCEV Digital Badges

iCEV is committed to providing lifelong learners the tools necessary to achieve academic and professional goals. In an ever-changing marketplace, it is essential to communicate skills and credentials effectively. iCEV has partnered with Credly to offer a modernized version of credentials through digital badging. This fall, iCEV will begin offering digital badges to anyone who earns an industry certification hosted on the iCEV Certification Testing Platform; iCEV has already started awarding badges to educators who attend an iCEV professional development event.

iCEV first began awarding digital badges at CTE Inspired, a virtual conference hosted by iCEV. Badges were awarded to presenters, as well as attendees, based on the number of sessions attended. Nearly 2,000 presenters and recipients received an iCEV digital badge by participating in CTE Inspired. 

Whether an individual earns an industry certification or an educator receives professional development credit, the digital badges awarded by iCEV offer a portable, verifiable method for professional accomplishment. Visit our website to learn more about iCEV’s new digital badging initiatives. 

By admin in Advance CTE Fall Meeting
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Newly Developed Certifications and Industry Value

Monday, March 25th, 2019

This post is written by iCEV, a Platinum Level sponsor of the 2019 Advance CTE Spring Meeting.

As we all know, industry sectors are unique. All have their own established history of hiring practices and methods for producing future workers. However, sectors are evolving and picking up on best practices learned from other industries. Industry certifications serve as one great example. 

Several industries not traditionally driven by certifications have noticed how well the certification model is working in other sectors. They recognize certifications provide value to employers by assisting in recruiting qualified candidates who are able to hit the ground running in new positions and know that students are taking coursework at both the secondary and postsecondary levels preparing them for these careers. Additionally, certifications at these levels can encourage a student to pursue a career in the field.

For these reasons, industry has taken the initiative on building certifications to improve the recruitment and hiring process.  However, not all certifications are equal in their value to the industry, employers and career seekers. Certifications offering the most value to all three stakeholders have three components in common:

1. Standards

As with all valuable certifications, it is important standards are created by an entity so respected and recognized that they can speak for the industry.  The standards are the fundamental foundation certifications are built on and establish the measurables of the certification.  This allows the certification to be portable to all employers in the industry.  For example, Express Employment Professionals is a leading staff provider who works with thousands of businesses to place 556,000 career seekers annually. They know what businesses are looking for in employees and have the credibility to create comprehensive industry standards for several career fields.

2. Certification Administration

As industry leaders start the process of creating certifications, they often lack the foundation level knowledge of how to develop and administer a proper certification program. For a certification to be successful, it is important for it to be administered by an entity experienced with the tasks of certification exam creation and testing procedures. In addition, it is important for both employers and certification achievers that results are easily verified by qualified parties. Southwest Airlines, recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the World’s Most Admired Companies for 22 consecutive years, has highly coveted standards for communication and customer service. When faced with the challenge of finding candidates who met their company’s soft-skills standards, Southwest realized this was a growing challenge for all companies. The idea of certifying students based on their skills and how it relates to the “Southwest way” was appealing to the company, but the logistics of managing a certification program was out of their scope of knowledge. Southwest then partnered with CEV Multimedia to administer the program due to CEV’s expertise in managing certification programs.

3. Promotion Through Education

A certification can be in the marketplace for years or even decades before employers immediately recognize its name or value.  Even some of the most established certifications lack consistent recognition. The time span to gain universal recognition can be expedited by industry leaders promoting the certification WHILE certification achievers are proving the value of the certification on the job. For example, for Elanco, an industry leader in animal health, creating certifications results in a “value-beyond-product” to their customers, from veterinarian offices to pet stores to production facilities. Elanco makes it part of their mission to educate customers on the value of the certifications and how the certifications can assist in hiring qualified candidates. By helping their customers create a pipeline of qualified employees, Elanco demonstrates their investment in not only seeing the whole industry succeed but in seeing a local veterinarian and business owner succeed, as well. Promotion through education is an ongoing process, and the work is never done. As more certification earners enter the workforce with certifications and prove value to an employer, certifications gain recognition.

There is no doubt that certifications if created in an exemplary manner, create value for job seekers, employers and entire industry segments immediately upon inception.

iCEV currently tests for 14 industry-recognized certifications, and over 16,000 individuals have earned certification. To learn more, please visit http://www.icevonline.com/certifications.

By admin in Advance CTE Spring Meeting
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