Teaching and Learning blog

Now more than ever schools are turning to online learning, so why not utilize online learning platforms to help your program with accreditation?

NACEP accreditation recognizes programs that have consistently met or exceeded rigorous, peer-reviewed standards in six areas: Partnership, Curriculum, Faculty, Students, Assessment, and Program Evaluation. These program standards create a quality framework to ensure that students are taking authentic college courses for transcripted college credit while in high school. Becoming a NACEP accredited program requires the submission of a variety of evidence documenting practice, policy, and procedures that meet or exceed NACEP’s Standards. Online learning platforms, like those offered by Pearson, can be an important ally in working towards accreditation.

Alignment via online learning platforms

An accredited program ensures that college courses offered by high school teachers are as rigorous as courses offered on the college campus. Coordinating online platforms between the college and the high school keeps assignments aligned and curriculum tight. By having identical content, the programs are meeting equivalency standards and comparison criteria (exams, homework, lab exercises, essays, etc.). Grading policies and rubrics can be the same within digital platforms to ensure continuity (number of tries, points deducted per wrong answer, extra credit, rubrics provided within the platforms, etc.) which helps programs demonstrate alignment with NACEP’s Assessment and Curriculum Standards.

Embedded professional development

Providing the depth and breadth of professional development needed to keep dual enrollment faculty up-to-date can be a challenge. Pearson offers weekly, discipline-specific, live and on-demand webinars for MyLab® and Mastering® that cover registration, assignment creation, testing, best practices, and other topics that help meet training criteria. Plus, you have access to training documents like how-to videos and planning toolkits. These resources can assist with documenting faculty professional development to meet NACEP’s Faculty Standards.

Downloadable assessment data

Programs need fast access to accurate data reports that highlight key course performance metrics including student pass/fail rates, content mastery, assignment completion, and formative assessment scores. With online platforms, course data can easily be downloaded and exported to Microsoft® Excel files for detailed analysis, allowing programs to make data-driven decisions and laying the foundation for program evaluation.

Viable alternative to in-person labs and hands-on experiences

Online platforms offer alternative learning experiences for students, especially during COVID-19 when the flexibility of online learning is essential and budgets are being stretched. Pearson’s Mastering platform is one example of a versatile tool, providing virtual laboratory exercises and dissections that engage students as if they were in the physical lab space. Struggling to offer content because the high school laboratory lacks necessary equipment? Mastering can help bridge the gap so that all students have equivalent laboratory experiences.

In addition to science offerings in Mastering, MyLab provides less expensive, virtual experiences for other “hands-on” Career and Technical Education fields, including automotive technology, culinary science, carpentry, and more. Creating real options for hands-on exercises provides your program maximum flexibility in instruction to help students continue to thrive despite COVID disruption. MyLab and Mastering present dual enrollment programs with an opportunity to document the ways they ensure equivalent content, even in the midst of a rapid shift to online coursework.

Pearson: your accreditation ally

Our MyLab and Mastering online learning platforms offer all these important benefits to help you document your activities in preparation for NACEP accreditation, while also improving the student and teacher experience. In addition, instructors have maximum control over their course, offering the flexibility to easily create courses to fit program needs. Courses can be shared with colleagues and adjuncts, copied for next semester, linked to an LMS, and more.

With the uncertainty of COVID-19 weighing heavily on instructors and programs, a solid back-up plan is needed for online and remote learning that has academics integrated with realistic experiences. By partnering with Pearson for your dual enrollment program, you can get:

• award-winning digital learning platforms that can be personalized for each student
• online homework and tutorial services that engage students and improve results
• preparation, intervention, and assessment diagnostics that gauge student readiness
• technology and services to provide in-depth data and analytics for your program
• college and career readiness tools that promote personal and social skills

Want to know more?

Watch this Pearson & NACEP on-demand webinar to learn more about how online platforms facilitate NACEP accreditation

Explore MyLab & Mastering features for educators.

Learn more about NACEP and accreditation.

What is high-quality career and technical education? For years, policymakers, business leaders, education professionals and others have referenced and called for high-quality CTE programs. But until recently, there has been no comprehensive, evidence-based definition of this term.

To bring clarity to this conversation around high-quality CTE and help CTE educators and administrators develop and improve the quality of their CTE programs of study, the Association for Career and Technical Education® has created a comprehensive, research-based program of study framework and tested that framework through a pilot study. The ACTE® Quality CTE Program of Study Framework includes a companion program self-evaluation instrument, available in print and online, that is intended to be used by CTE educators and administrators as they seek to evaluate and improve their CTE programs.

The framework defines 92 criteria across the following 12 elements, a set of evidence-based standards that address the breadth of activities that impact CTE program delivery, implementation and quality:

• Standards-aligned and Integrated Curriculum
• Sequencing and Articulation
• Student Assessment
• Prepared and Effective Program Staff
• Engaging Instruction
• Access and Equity
• Facilities, Equipment, Technology and Materials
• Business and Community Partnerships
• Student Career Development
• Career and Technical Student Organizations
• Work-based Learning
• Data and Program Improvement

This voluntary tool can be used for program self-evaluation, program improvement and to encourage secondary-postsecondary collaboration. The framework’s elements and criteria are designed to be as mutually exclusive as possible. The online program self-evaluation instrument can provide automatically calculated scores and direct users to the High-quality CTE Tools online library for areas identified as needing improvement. This library includes strategies, case studies, professional development models and toolkits to help practitioners develop and support success within each element.

The framework and self-evaluation may be especially useful related to new local needs assessment provisions required in the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V), the newly reauthorized version of the federal law supporting a system of CTE throughout the nation. State and local CTE providers are currently developing plans to implement the federal law at the local level, including the comprehensive local needs assessment.

Additionally, ACTE is incorporating the quality framework into its efforts to recognize and disseminate CTE best practices through our professional development activities and awards program. This is the first of several blogs that will explore some of the elements within the Quality CTE Program of Study Framework. You can find more details and tools online at www.acteonline.org/high-quality-CTE.

Career and Technical Education (CTE) is emerging as a platform for educational innovation in schools. CTE and academic courses are now part and parcel in preparing students for the rigors of learning, living, working, and playing in the 21st century.

On June 17, 2019, Pearson CTE Specialists Deborah Noakes and Jim Brazell presented a workshop titled Certified Futures at Certiport’s 2019 Certified Conference. Certiport,® a Pearson business, is dedicated to helping learners excel and succeed through certification.

At Certified, teachers were asked to write haiku poems where the first stanza reflects the state of learning, the second line illustrates a key change, and the third line exhibits the final state of learning after the change. A haiku is a poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five. Below are select Haiku from students and teachers:

Student Haiku

My mom made me come
My teacher cares about me
Now I want to go

My phone is my life
I learned how to innovate
Tech is my life line

I’m not an artist
Teacher, teach me Photoshop
I am an artist now

Teacher Haiku

Code on screens
Inanimate life takes shape
Building the future

Technologies
Here, there, and everywhere
Everyone needs to certify

The test is a bore
Entertainment we implore
Too stressed for high stakes tests

Certification
Empowering students
Embrace the future

Apathy vs Enthusiasm
Daily grind of change
Students seek relevance
Teaching relevance is key
Real world experiences
Certify them all

The world is ready
Education is behind
Time to shift the mind

Students bored in class
Active engaging lessons
Transform the classroom

Graduation sparks
Those that certify before
They face the future

These haiku exemplify the key shift in 21st century learning: The shift from axiomatic (self-evident truth) to inductive (using observation and experience to move from specific to broader conclusions) presentation of curriculum. This strategy worked in the 1960’s as a platform for the United States to reform teaching physics as a national priority motivated by the Space Race.

The shift in pedagogy engender improvements to education by modeling the way experts work and think affording students the opportunity to approach the content knowledge in the same way that experts approach problems in the field. Today, we call this inquiry-driven, project-based learning and for many states and schools the method of assessment is industry certification. CTE is answering this call for innovation. Learn more about Pearson CTE programs.