A few colleges have adopted a specific cultural diversity graduation requirement. Intercultural Communication, a speech course, fulfills the diversity requirement at Prince George's Community College in Maryland and San Diego City College, as does a course in ethnic, women's, or gay and lesbian studies at San Francisco City College. The Community College of Denver developed a faculty guide for infusing cultural diversity discussions at three progressively sophisticated levels into any course. [N]
Interpersonal skills are addressed frequently at the Associate level as units within occupational, psychology, or applied communication courses that focus on intra- and interpersonal skills necessary for group interaction. Some colleges offer stand-alone Human Resource courses to meet state requirements (Eastern Idaho Technical College; Helena Vo Tech Center in Montana; and University of North Dakota Community College), similar to locally developed requirements at Vance-Greenville Community College in North Carolina and Ogeechee Technical College in Georgia. Yakima Community College in Washington requires Human Relations in the Workplace for all students enrolled in an occupational/technical program that does not include a unit about employee interaction. Other community colleges offer elective courses with titles like Group Process (Stark Technical College in Ohio), Interpersonal Effectiveness (Monroe Community College in New York) and Individual and Group Behavior in Organizations (Moorpark College in California). At Southwestern Technical College in Minnesota, the Worker Effectiveness Training course builds on the rich working experiences that participants bring to the class through a variety of adult learning activities and workplace applications. The course focuses on individual development of the worker, interpersonal development for team membership, and career planning and development.
Colleges with divisions of International Business (Butler County Community College in Kansas [II-26]; Scottsdale Community College in Arizona; Dona Ana Community College in New Mexico; and Los Angeles Trade Technical College) offer an applied strain of cultural diversity, emphasizing the impact of geography, history, religion, politics, education, and customers on international communication and trade policies.
Other colleges have focused on a broader set of competencies, imparting skills in utilizing multiple resources to plan and implement substantial projects so that students gain a personal understanding of interdependence across divisions of the organization. A related taxonomy of skills that high-performance workplaces seek in employees has been published by the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) of the U.S. Department of Labor, which has led to initiatives that vary widely in scope, ambition, and outcomes. SCANS introduced an extensive set of skills into the national vocabulary of workplace requirements, including interpersonal relationships but incorporating other competencies as well, and nearly one-fifth of the campuses in our survey and even more individual certificate and degree programs have undertaken initiatives to integrate SCANS skills. Meeting SCANS competencies has clearly become the curricular reform de rigueur, even though the scope and outcomes of these initiatives vary widely. Some colleges have adopted the SCANS taxonomy in toto (Imperial Valley Community College in California; Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado; Richland Community College in Illinois; and El Paso Community College in Texas), while others have advanced a locally developed set of core competencies.
As part of the process to guide New Hampshire Technical Colleges in their transformation to comprehensive colleges, a statewide group of faculty, administrators, and business representatives used a DACUM-like process to establish core competencies; course outlines now denote direct or indirect instruction for each skill within every college course. [II-27]At San Jacinto Community College in Texas a directive from the State Coordinating Board to integrate the SCANS skills meshed nicely with the campus effort to implement a locally devised set of Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs), which included SCANS skills as well as technical and career-specific outcomes. The SLOs were identified by division deans, with individual faculty developing classroom learning activities. One administrator described the process as "a lot of little pieces coming together to make a climate for learning," as faculty moved beyond fear of encroaching into another territory and towards an organizational culture in which learning and assessment discussions flow more freely. [N]
Similarly, Waukesha County Technical College in Wisconsin has had 21 Critical Life Skills in place for a decade, which are introduced in gen ed courses and reinforced and applied through occupational study. (For a broader description of Waukesha Critical Life Skills, see ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 330 386.)
Following a yearlong process in which a cross-institutional group of faculty identified 24 core elements, inclusive of work-related and academic skills, instructors at Washtenaw Community College in Michigan now determine which core competencies they wish to meet, provided each academic and occupational program meets all elements. The college catalog lists the core elements met by each course, and students make enrollment selections based on competencies rather than a distribution of gen ed and major requirements. Students review their progress towards completion via an on-line "audit" system of their transcript.[II-28]
But even with such laborious undertakings, instructors and administrators express concerns about measuring SCANS or core competencies. Colleges sometimes use lengthy checklists or written descriptions of skills addressed in a particular course, with little substantiation.[13] Because SCANS or core skills are often infused into existing occupational and academic coursework, their effectiveness often depends on instructor commitment--a difficult factor to evaluate. One division dean noted that "curriculum drives instructional and pedagogical change," suggesting that changing course assignments and activities is the most efficient means in modifying instructor behavior towards performance outcomes.
To guide faculty and students in measuring productivity competencies--of moving from "knowing" to "doing"--a few colleges have adopted workplace simulations within the school environment, or have designed culminating or capstone projects that unite academic and technical skills to complete a work-similar plan, proposal, or product.
Simulations--in which an instructor attempts to reproduce the physical setting, interaction, work products, and technical skills required in the workplace--are ways to assist students in moving from classroom-based knowledge to practical performance. At the College of DuPage in Illinois, an elaborate Business Simulation Project simultaneously teaches seven business, management, and marketing courses, with students in each course forming that particular department in a hypothetical firm. The simulation provides a framework for students to understand the flow of work among departments and the underlying system of work production. Interpersonal communication occurs within and among departments, and between managers and line workers. Students collaborate in teams, as the Production students explain their job well enough to the Human Resources students that Human Resources can prepare an evaluation instrument for the Production Department. Students apply industry approved software packages to improve productivity and product marketability. The simulation is cost-effective, in that enrollment in each course is typically six to eight students, but the simulation can be offered even if a course has an enrollment of only one. [II-29]
At George Wallace Community College in Alabama, on-the-job conditions are simulated in the lab and with actual work projects. Electrical students are given a house that has been constructed in the lab to complete the wiring. The project is tested with live power and inspected by local building officials to ensure all electrical codes are met. Masonry/Building Construction students, under supervision of the instructor, have constructed several storage buildings on campus. Auto Mechanics and Auto Body Repair students are given printed work orders to complete repairs that meet quality and time specifications designated by the industry. The instructor also uses industry standards for evaluation of students' work. [N]
The same college finds that state and national competitions sponsored by student vocational organizations offer realistic performance opportunities for some community college students. However, the constraints of time and non-school responsibilities reduce the availability of this experience for many students, and competitions typically focus on a limited number of skills.
Capstone projects are another way to integrate academic and technical skills. A capstone project is generally the final demonstration of a student's knowledge and performance ability, as measured by the planning, execution, and presentation of a work-like product. At Columbus State Community College in Ohio, for example, students in Microcomputer Technology work in small groups to evaluate appropriate hardware and software for a start-up small business system, and design and develop the appropriate forms, presentations, data entry, and retrieval procedures that such a firm would require. To complete the project, students must conduct interviews of internal and external parties to gain information; evaluate the purposes and alternative forms of management reports; develop complete simulations of the database, spreadsheet, and other functional systems; and make a class presentation using transparencies, graphs, and charts. [II-30]At the same college, students in Construction Management track a building project through start-up, control assignments, control structures, organizational forms, subcontractor and vendor management, and move-out phases, using a computer simulation of project management activities and processes. [II-30]
The Industrial Technology students of Sinclair Community College in Ohio work in teams to design a factory with the capacity to machine a total of 504,000 wheel cylinders per year to required specifications. The final project includes a written report supplying a layout drawing of the plant site; a description of the material handling system and its method of operation; cost projections for the next decade; calculations or direct and indirect labor costs per shift and per year; annual salaried labor projections; estimated total direct material costs for finished goods and scrap; a list of production machinery and cost projections for salaried and hourly labor, production machinery, scrap, freight, equipment installation, production and quality control instruments, site development, and other overhead costs; flow diagrams of processes, and factory layout; and a calculated costs per completed part. At the end of the semester, students simulate an engineering report to a Board of Directors of a manufacturing firm. The only grades assigned are A, B, and F. [II-31]
To culminate a series of conventional, independent courses in electronics, semiconductors, and operational amplifiers, San Diego City College offers a two-course capstone sequence. The courses are offered only in the evenings to allow students contact with an adjunct instructor who is an engineering director for a leading electronics design and manufacturing firm. Students are organized into small engineering design teams to design a microcomputer controller for a device to track the sun across the sky. Each team submits for guidance and consultation a timeline for constructing, testing, and presenting the prototype design, including initial design draft, final design, component vendors, prototype assembly, and final testing dates and then uses designing software to generate a schematic diagram. Once the unit is completed, the instructor inserts faults to sharpen the students' troubleshooting skills. The department chair notes that the capstone courses attract four-year engineering graduates whose training has emphasized theory and who seek practical experience in their field. The courses are also cost-effective in that students build components that are expensive to purchase in a completed form, thereby gaining a greater appreciation for complexity and its costs. [II-32]
As in the case of other competencies, then, there are numerous ways to introduce system utilization skills into any course; but simulations and capstone courses offer an approach which integrates most of the career preparation domains identified in this monograph into a substantial project, validating a student's postsecondary education to potential employers.
[13] Assessing SCANS skills has been troublesome. We have seen elaborate matrices cross-referencing SCANS skills with courses within a particular program, with no evidence that the skill is being imparted or mastered in a meaningful way or in an everyday context, as advocated by the SCANS document. Three colleges in our sample appeared to be wrestling seriously with this challenge. El Paso Community College in Texas uses a designated form to describe learning activities which integrate SCANS skills. [N] Richland Community College in Illinois [N] and San Jacinto Community College in Texas [N] attempt to measure SCANS competencies through descriptions of activities and testing. See also Shepherd and Morgan (1996) for efforts at Richland.