Summary

//The Intersection between the Classroom and the Workplace//
(http://geotechcenter.org)

One of the biggest challenges for any educator in an academic or career and technical education (CTE) program is to make certain their curriculum is meeting the needs of their graduates. For CTE programs, it is vital that the curriculum is aligned with the needs of industry and adequately prepares graduates to successfully enter the workforce. Any disconnect between what is taught in the classroom and what is practiced in the workplace can be career-limiting for graduates and terminal for an academic program. In order to ensure that neither of these ever happens, educators need to know that what they teach is really what students need to learn in order to have a successful and productive career. The most challenging conundrum then is to answer the question “//Does my curriculum teach what students need to know//?” This white paper attempts to help educators understand and meet those needs in a well researched and industry-vetted approach. In order to understand what industry workers need to know, many technical educators and industries use the DACUM (Develop A CurriculuM) process. During a DACUM workshop, a small number of expert workers for a specific occupation are gathered together for a two day “brain dump” of their job's duties and task as well as identifying what knowledge, skills and behaviors are important. The outcomes from this process are tabulated into a DACUM chart like below:



** DACUM Chart of GIS Technician **

This chart can be used to draft a course curriculum for the specific occupation. This is a valid process for local technical programs, but needs an additional step of validation and refinement if it is to be applied on a larger scale, such as regional or national. To mitigate this deficiency and still arrive at an accurate and comprehensive DACUM for GIS technicians, the GeoTech Center developed a systematic procedure for combining multiple DACUM outcomes into a single meta-DACUM. This process began with the collection of all previously completed DACUMs for this occupation. These were compiled and entered into a database with the location of each DACUM event plotted on a map. Additional DACUM job analyses were then conducted in areas not previously studied. To further increase the reliability of these new studies, their results were validated by survey using local GIS professional organizations. Then, with help from industry experts across the U.S., the outcomes were carefully consolidated into a single “meta-DACUM” job analysis for GIS technicians. This map depicts where the GIS Technician DACUMs were conducted:

** Meta-DACUM Sites: A Decade of Data (1997—2009) ** **The Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM)—A National Framework** Despite the validity and value of the DACUM and Meta-DACUM process, many educators and professionals remain skeptical of their value as guides to curriculum development. They may view them as useful instruments for //trainers// and //training// (short-term knowledge), but view them as inadequate for //educators// and //education// (long-term knowledge). What these skeptics require is a national document that addresses all of a professional's skills and knowledge, including academic and technical, as well as professional skills, such as communication and ethics. To provide such a comprehensive framework, the Department of Labor's (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA) has developed a framework they term a //competency model//. The genius of their model is the generic nature of the process that can be applied across all industries. This process is composed of //Tiers// of competencies, starting at the most general, Tier 1, applicable to all industries, and progressing to more industry specific competencies in Tiers 2 to 5 and finally to Tiers 6-9 which are occupation-specific competencies.

In 2010, the GeoTech Center was successful in assisting the DOLETA in completing the Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM) that had been in development for nearly a decade. With the GTCM in place, the table was set for the Center to pursue a curriculum development project of national scale. The GTCM provides the national framework upon which to hang our own detailed Meta-DACUM outcome. It is the intent that the meta-DACUM and GTCM together removes the issues that the curriculum development effort is too local, too time specific or too narrowly focused on only technical skills to be applicable across the U.S. geospatial industry.




 * Industry-wide vs. Vendor-specific Certification**

Until 2011, the geospatial industry was seen as lacking much in terms of widely-recognized professional certification for its workers. The ASPRS has offered certifications based on competency examination for years, but number less than a 1,000 in an industry the DOLETA has pegged at nearly 850,000 workers. The most popular certification in the industry, the GISP from the GIS Certification Institute (GISCI), at 5,000+ holders, remains portfolio-based and lacks a competency exam that many believe necessary for it to be of true merit. The work of the GeoTech Center on both the Meta-DACUM and GTCM have prompted the GISCI to commit to including an examination, based on the GTCM, into the GISP certification by 2014. In parallel, Esri announced a sequence of its own vendor-specific certifications beginning in January 2011. The difference between the GISP and Esri certifications, of course, is the more-narrowly focused Esri skills versus the more generic GTCM skills. I mention this because our GTCM curriculum effort is designed to be generic and follow the industry-wide model, not a single vendor model. For example, we will be including a number of Free & Open Source Software for GIS (FOSS4G) learning resources with our curriculum, as well as more specific vendor resources.


 * Development By Consensus**

While basing our efforts on both the GTCM and Meta-DACUM would appear to be sufficient to ensure wide adoption of our work, we realize that even the fairly large and diverse group of educators that comprise the GeoTech Center CoPI team is not sufficient to ensure the widest possible adoption of the resulting curriculum. To expand our effort and be as inclusive as possible, we are using a train-the-trainer model to engage as many two-year and four-year educators in the development effort as we can accommodate with our limited funding. This method accomplishes two goals for the GTCM: 1) familiarize educators with the tool and 2) develop curriculum based on it that can be modified for local consumption by educators and their students. We plan to accomplish these goals by conducting hybird-style workshops that combine both traditional face-to-face time with extensive use of webinars (Adobe Connect) and social media (wikis). Each course will be collaboratively developed by approximately 20 participating educators, led by the GeoTech CoPI team of 8 members (A. Johnson, J. Johnson, C. Semerjian, K. Yanow, P. Davis, A. Ballard, R. Jackson, and V. DiNoto). Even after 28 leading educators have collaborated on the effort, we will vet the results with the entire geospatial educator community nationwide through the GeoTech web site, social media and direct email solicitation. Much like the Meta-DACUM process, we seek to engage the maximum number of professionals and educators to increase the validity of our work. The results of these two workshops will be the first four Model Course l//earning packs// in what we anticipate will become 5 to 8 model courses that can form the basis for a Model Certificate as the ultimate outcome for the project. The effort began in March 2011 and is scheduled to conclude in August 2012.


 * National Standard—Local Implementation**

While we are basing our research on national efforts (GTCM and Meta-DACUM), we fully recognize that no “national” curriculum will ever be adopted, verbatim, by college educators accustomed to developing their own material. Indeed, while we plan to provide as detailed a course “outline” and Model Course Pack as possible, populated with vetted resources and materials, we expect local faculty to customize the material to suit their own local industry needs and college curriculum customs and organization. One key component to maintain our own fidelity with the industry-created GTCM is to incorporate the role of recorder during the entire process to act as an independent reviewer and document our research and process so future researchers can continue the process, while evaluating for themselves whether we did indeed stay faithful to the original GTCM. To help ensure that any local adaptation of the model courses is itself aligned with the GTCM, we will provide effective faculty training for using the material. In addition, we will provide detailed Program Assessment Tools to allow educators to evaluate their curriculum both pre and post model course adaptation. The results of their self-evaluation can be compared against our planned database of college assessment results, as well as consultation with any of the extended GeoTech Center CoPIs and new partner educators who complete the extended GTCM Model Course development project.


 * Additional Benefits - Articulation, General Education and individual Self Assessment**

One of the major issues for geospatial program sustainability is the lack of articulation of courses between the community college and its feeder high schools, or with university programs that provides students with a clear career pathway. One outcome of the development of the Program Assessment Tools is a metric that can be used to evaluate course content for articulation. Sustainability can also be enhanced when geospatial courses can be designated as meeting General Education (GE) requirements. The content of courses outlined in the Model Course Packs, along with examples where those courses have been accepted for GE credit, should help other colleges offer similar geospatial GE courses. Finally, the Program Assessment Tool can be useful for an individual self-assessment. Students progressing through a program can identify their individual strengths and gaps. Such an individual self-assessment could also be used to match students to specific Internship opportunities helping to ensure a good fit with industry needs and aiding in a successful internship program.


 * Future Plans**

This project began in March 2011 and will be complete in its first iteration in August 2012. We are planning to continue the process once we complete version 1.0 to expand the details of each model course outline and pack, such as additional learning resources, exam questions, etc. Beyond that, we will examine the remaining occupations in the DOLETA GTCM, where many, such as Surveying Technician, lack any specificity in their competencies as required for meaning curriculum development. We will engage the Department of Labor to assist them in completing the occupation-specific requirements, as well as maintaining those we have created to update them to version 2.0 as the technology itself changes rapidly over time. We will also investigate how we can better specify the skill and competency needs of “ancillary” geospatial users that are not officially recognized as an occupation, but use geospatial technology as an important part of their occupation. This is a growing segment of the geospatial workforce as the industry spreads to users across all segments of the workforce.

Phillip Davis, Principal Investigator and Director, GeoTech Center