DICP Resources: Building Strategic Partnerships

As you will remember from last week’s posts, two of the LINCS Community groups, Career Pathways and Postsecondary Completion, are planning to highlight resources such as program implementation tools, archived webinars and online courses from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education funded project, Designing Instruction for Career Pathways (DICP). These resources are now available within our LINCS Resource Collection, if you use the search term – DICP. We hope that highlighting these professional development materials will impact your program and practice.

This week, we will be highlighting the topic of Building Strategic Partnerships, and there are a number of resources from the DICP (Designing Instruction for Career Pathways) project that can inform us and help us think about this topic, including a webcast, an online course, and several resources.  You can access the webcast at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flR5Zz9_LEI&list=PLImUeO1ttx1Y7gnT66Ak30oBic4DXZtnv  and that might be a good place to start. 

The webcast features a panel of three experts discussing the topic of Building Strategic Partnerships, and they cover why career pathways has become so important as a means of getting our adult education learners into the workplace and the various partnerships that are necessary to build to make this happen.  The partnerships they identify are at the federal level (departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services), community agencies and groups such as Goodwill and Job Corps, community colleges, local Adult Education programs, and area employers and businesses.  They point up the need to encourage career focus early on in a student’s college program, the importance of financial assistance especially for adult students, working with area employers to determine the career pathways to offer, and getting started by being willing to work with whoever is interested in working with you.

I’m sure that many of you have experiences in building partnerships that you could share that the rest of us would like to hear about.  Those first-hand and actual accounts are so very helpful in beginning, expanding, and building programs.  Something you contribute about the special difficulties or successes you have had could be just what someone else needs to hear to open up their thinking.

Remember that all discussions around DICP resources this week will be cross-posted in the Career Pathways and Postsecondary Completion groups. I will be pointing out different online resources as the week progresses, but you are the real experts, and what you have to share is most important.  Thanks in advance!

Donna Brian

SME Career Pathways

Comments

Today, I am pointing out some specific resources available to us in the Career Pathways resource collection that have come into the LINCS collection from the DICP (Designing Instruction for Career Pathways) group. There were 167 of these career pathways resources that came over from DICP, and I’ve pulled out the most recent that are especially applicable to our focus on Building Strategic Partnerships this week.  Each of these titles is also a link to the summary of the resource in the LINCS Resource Collection.  And in that summary is the link to the online resource. 

 

Getting Started Toolkit (Part 2): Partnership Development and Planning

Courses to Employment: Partnering to Create Paths to Education and Careers

Career Pathways Initiative: Building Cross-Agency Partnerships Webinar Recording

Career Pathways Toolkit: Six Key Elements for Success

Farther, Faster: Six Promising Programs Show How Career Pathway Bridges Help Basic Skills Students Earn Credentials that Matter

Career Pathways Toolkit: Six Key Elements for Success – Element Three: Design Education and Training Programs

Create Your Own I-BEST Program

Engaging Employers to Support Adult Career Pathways Programs

The Promise of Career Pathways Systems Change

 

For you who would like to access the complete list of Career Pathways Resources, follow these steps:

  1. Click on the LINCS logo at the top of this page. That takes you to the LINCS home page.
  2. Once there, at the top of the page find the drop down list under Professional Development, and choose Resource Collection àResource Collection Search.
  3. This takes you to the list of all 561 resources currently in the collection, but the search feature at the top will help you filter them to find the ones you want.
  4. For the topic area, choose Career Pathways.  You can further choose how many years back you want to include. To limit the results to just the DICP resources we have been talking about, put DICP in the Search Terms box. Then Search.

    Let us know which resources you find especially helpful. 

    Donna Brian

    SME, Career Pathways

Today I want to highlight the free online course, Building Strategic Partnerships. Building Strategic Partnerships is intended for adult education program administrators interested in building new and strengthening existing partnerships essential for successful development and implementation of Adult Career Pathways programs and systems. If you have never signed up for an online course on the LINCS Learning Portal, then you have to setup a login for the Learning Portal. This is a separate login from your Career Pathways Community of Practice login. The LINCS Learning Portal can be accessed here: https://lincs.ed.gov/.

The Building Strategic Partnerships course is self-paced and features three modules: (1) Understanding Strategic Partnerships; (2) Engaging Strategic Partnerships; and (3) Sustaining Strategic Partnerships. This course will take approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete. It isn’t necessary to complete the course in one sitting.  You can exit the course at any point, and the next time you sign in, it will take you back to the place you exited.

The course references and builds on many of the same resources I pointed up yesterday, so if you have already looked at any of those, you have a head start!  When you have taken this course, share some of your thoughts about it with the group.  This discussion doesn’t have to happen this week.  Whenever you are ready, respond to this post with your comments, and we will be able to keep all the comments about this topic together in one thread.  The discussion can take place over time as people have the opportunity to access the information.

More information tomorrow!

Donna Brian

SME Career Pathways

ACP News: Volume 2 Issue 1 (March 2012)

Many of the DICP newsletters highlighted state work and partnerships at the state level; however, the March 2012 issue (Volume 2: Issue 1) focused on partnerships at the local level. This issue featured three local communities and the partnerships that blend adult education and career-technical program content to support local workforce needs:

  • Washington State - Automative Partnership a Win-Win for Dealerships in Seattle Area (Shoreline Community College)
  • Illinois - Instituto's Carreras en Salud Meets Chicago-Area Demand for Latino Healthcare Professionals
  • Indiana - Blackhawk Technical College Demonstrates Resilience, Flexibility in Support of Dislocated Workers

Read the entire newsletter here:http://lincs.ed.gov/publications/html/acp-newsletters/vol2issue1.html

After reading the article, we also invite you to share with the group your career pathways program, the partnership(s) you have cultivated within your local community, and its impact.

 

For the complete list of DICP newsletters, visit: http://lincs.ed.gov/programs/acp

I work at a Career Tech Center for high schoolers. They attend our school for half of their school day and learn skills for a pathway/career.

My job at the tech center is to create partnerships with Post-Secondary partners so that students get credit for the work they've already done (Articulation Agreements). This helps students get a start in their pathway before they graduate high school. It helps Post-Secondary institutions recruit students who are looking to go into specific fields.

We also have a placement specialist who helps students find internships, work studies, and other WBL opportunities in the community.

Our programs all have advisory committees that involve local career/industry members, post-secondary members, and other relevant community members.

 

(I have reposted this from the Youth to Adult thread at Donna's request.)