[MUSIC] So hi everyone, just to remind you my name is Dr. Michele Forte, I'm an assistant professor with Suny Empire State college in New York. And I'm very pleased to be joined this afternoon by Tom Lindsley, Tom is the director of federal government relations for ACT in Washing DC, and he has most generously, is willing to, [LAUGH] is willing to share his expertise with us today with respect to some of the topics we're covering. So Tom, welcome, thank you so much for joining us today. >> Thanks for the invitation. >> Yeah, no, we're thrilled. So, I wonder if you could start by just giving our learners or viewers a sense of your background, what brought you to this work, and maybe we can just start with that as a context and go from there. >> Sure, I work in Washington as a satellite office of ACT based in Iowa City. It's a national nonprofit working with individuals, helping them kind of achieve both education, but work for success as well. Provides a whole variety of sources of information and research, and tools to help individuals identify the skills they need or the skills they have. My own background, I was a liberal arts major so there is some hope there. And I got started by working on a political campaign after school, after I finished my graduate degree. And was able to meet a number of states political delegation and got a job, shortly after that. >> Mm-hm. >> More of an internship job, but that led one thing to another, to begin to learn the intricacies of the federal legislative policy making processes that could help me move into in effect a lobbying position, working with government there. So that's how I got there basically and I, we'll come back to that move from school to job by having some sort of demo, demonstrable experience in the workplace as we move along here. >> That's great, that's great. So thank you. So you've given us then a little bit of a hint of your trajectory. So I wonder then if you could speak to ACT, the issues maybe that ACT hopes to respond to what challenges is it trying to solve? Give us an overview maybe of the organization. >> Sure, ACT, it works all along the continuum of education and work force development. So we have research and tools available to educators of K-12 space transitioning from grade eight to middle school, middle school to high school. High school transitioning to secondary education as well as job training. And tools to help individuals all across those difficult transitions and times. So it involves, researching, merging, and ongoing issues, that need help to overcome. Providing the tools that we feel are based on evidence and research that will help people. >> Mm-hm. >> It's all based on omega science and research protocols. We have a whole army of industrial psychologists and psychometricians who help build these tools with a lot of integrity. So what we find by individuals using the solutions is very helpful in building a database, available publicly for others to look at, and sort of assess their own skills or career interests really along the trajectory of those research dimensions that we have. So, ACT is, it is a national non-profit, so we really are mission driven. And that drives our research and our curiosity, trying to stay ahead of these rapidly growing segments of society. The rapid change in the workplace as well as the different skill levels that are needed even to succeed in post secondary education. >> Mm-hm. Yeah, so that last piece to which you just referred, the sort of the rapidity with which this landscape, I guess with a capital L, changes. I think that's really interesting and it speaks to some of the topics we've discussed, even in this first part of our course. So, I guess I'm interested in how you use your phrase, psychometrics, and I think we'll, maybe, get back to that in a little bit. But I wonder how given that changing, shifting landscape, given the sort of, now we're 15 years into the 21st century, but we still appeal to the 21st century. How do organizations like ACT work with industry, work with job seekers, work with higher ed? And then sort of balancing what each group maybe has to offer, what each group can learn from one another. It sounds like a little bit of a balancing act. You're trying to get from one group to inform another. Can you speak to that a little bit? >> Yeah, it is based largely on insuring that our work has validity. >> Right. >> Has, is anchored in the real world. >> Mm-hm. >> But a world not only fir expectations, but real world standards. Team member levels, etcetera. So, as an example, I'll give you two examples. One, is the transition from high school to post secondary institutes where we every three years update our, what we call a National Curriculum Survey. And it's a very detailed effort that researches secondary school teachers as well as post secondary entry level course teachers to match their expectations and their judgement of the readiness of their students. And we always find it a mismatch. Largely mismatches that high school teachers feel their students are ready for post secondary education. Up in the 80% range for secondary instructors who get these students into first year credit they're in college. Their credit bearing courses will say that 23% of them will agree that they're ready for college work so it's a huge mismatch, and then we have to define what comprises that mismatch? What content levels are missing? What knowledge needs to be enriched? What increased levels of knowledge need to be addressed in order to balance out that respect? And that results in setting academic benchmarks or readiness coming out of high school. And that enables our researchers then to back map those benchmarks into the earlier grades so that you have some tools to see whether you're on track to be ready. By the time you graduate from high school. Similarly, in order to ensure that workforce solutions are helpful to individuals trying to get into the workforce. Instead of gathering a lot of smart experts around the table in a particular industry, for example, and say well what skills do you need. We actually entered the workplace and worked with those individuals who hold those jobs to define the exact skills that are essential to succeed in that job. >> Mm-hm. >> We're able to identify those skills for the employer even. We're able to determine the relative priority of those skills among each other. >> Mm-hm. >> That's some of the most important [INAUDIBLE]. And also to determine what level of [INAUDIBLE] are essential for succeeding in that job and they can put together a lot of detail Research and information about jobs across the country. And over a period of decades, we've been able to accumulate these individual analyses of jobs into a a national database and we find common threads among [INAUDIBLE] employers need across all of those jobs and that helps define some of the tools we're able to provide individuals in navigating that landscape. And we're constantly updating that database, because there are all new occupations coming on every year, skills that are needed and that all needs to be built into the database. >> All right. Yeah. So, I think those are really great examples because it demonstrates the complexity of your task. So you're sort of, I think you used the phrase back mapping. So you're thinking about where today, I'll just choose a random grade. Maybe today is seventh grader or sixth grader, fifth grader, might need to be at the time she graduates from high school in order to be ready whatever that next transition is. Right? Which would necessitate some pretty well researched intelligence about what that landscape will look like when that graduate student arrives on the scene and then currently you're having to take a look at that 60, I think it's 60% mismatch. [LAUGH] Which between what teachers think their students can do and what actually end up presenting. I mean that's a pretty significant mismatch between the two. So that's I think the research piece that you're doing and other organizations like yours are doing is crucial to help all of us translate what we're doing in one venue to another. >> I would agree. The more information you have, that you are going to be able to navigate that landscape and frankly that's becoming a more important skill for individuals coming out of their educational experience and their educational career, having the skills to be able to navigate the world you're entering for whatever you want to do is an important skill. >> Right. >> Finding the information resource. >> Right. >> [INAUDIBLE] the people who can help you most. >> Yeah, no, that's really interesting and it's something we've thought a lot about as well, so it's not only the actual competencies or knowledge or skills, but it's the ability to do all that to begin with. So there's sort of the skill on top of the skill set, it's the navigation, and arming people with the navigation. So, speaking of skills and competencies. What, in your estimation or to your research, are some of those skills and competencies? It sounds like you've had some pretty interesting results. With respect to distilling down, what presents over and over again is, so we hear, portable skills, transferable skills, etc., can you speak to that just a little bit? >> Yeah. The skills that emerged from our research that are common. [INAUDIBLE] most occupational fields are the kind of skills that [INAUDIBLE] probably [INAUDIBLE]. I'll give you an example of another document to look at where a broad range of occupational industry groups got together to identify the core skills that they look for in their occupational fields, and distilled the commonalities among [INAUDIBLE] into a single document and that's available publicly, as well. >> Mm-hm. >> We'll be able to provide that resource. But the kinds of skills that we asses regularly for employers ,for individuals to kind of determine where they might need to work on their skills are divided generally between what we call cognitive skills. That are things such as thinking, and reasoning, and remembering, as well as the conscious, intellectual skills, what you know. >> Mm-hm. >> And then, the non-cognitive skills, which are a little harder to define, but they're the ones that are called the soft skills. They're associated with an individual's attitudes. They're habits, they're behaviors, they're disciplines and those are a different set of skills, but increasingly important skills, that employers look for in hiring individuals into the workplace. So, to back, go back to the cognitive categories of skills. Which you know that seem most common across any occupational field we find relate to applied mathematics. A very basic of foundation in mathematics in ways that can be applied to the tasks and problems you face in ordinary workplace, budget. Another is what we call waiting for information, and this is the ability to read a lot of information you'll find in the workplace, distill the essential elements out of it. Be it a corporate wide memo, for example, and know exactly what the new policies are corporate wide etcetera. >> [LAUGH] And finally a category of skills that, for lack of a better term, we call locating information, but it's not, as simple as that. It's really interesting, all the documentation you find at a workplace, whether it's pages, tables, charts, blueprints, spreadsheets, being able to look at the variety of information displays analyze them learn how to use it to solve the problem Job. And all of those categories of skills are measurable and we can do that whole business. The other kinds of skills, just quickly, that we can assess deal with applied technology skills, business writing, listening for understanding, an important skill in the workplace, teamwork, workplace observation, things like that. And they correlate almost exact to this what we're, what I was going to refer to as common employ ability skills in the framework that was put together by this large group of industry organizations. That is available online and it's billed as the skills all employers need no matter where they work. And it outlines this mix of cognitive, non-cognitive skills that both employers ay are essential for success in today's workplace. >> Yeah, I'm sort of hanging on your every word because sometimes sort of out in the field, out in this world, there's almost a ubiquitous reference to non-cognitive scales, whatever the phrasing, whatever the phraseology is. And then I've heard some in the field say, well, you know, you can't really measure it, you just sort of know it when you see it right? The joke is, professors often say, well we know an A paper when we read one, which is decidedly unhelpful, both to writer and to anyone who else is trying to replicate your practice, right. So it sounds to me like you've homed in on some of the important pieces of what these competencies actually look like, how they express in the workplace and that they in fact can be learned. Assuming that my interpretation is correct, could you speak to that or? >> [LAUGH] Yeah, there are priorities among those soft skills that employers look for. Just to illustrate some of the skills that we've identified and are able to assess, and able to provide curriculum for, frankly, are things like creativity and discipline, goodwill, organization and order, sociability, stability, customer service, how careful you are in the workplace, in terms of thinking through what you're going to say before you say it. Good will, just attitudes towards good will. Workplace thinking about your business colleagues, others you've worked with on your team. So we're able to even look at some of the more negative behaviors, like absenteeism and resilience to work stress, things like that. Those are individual skills. You can learn how to better those skills on your own. We have curriculum that helps back that up, as do other people. I think that those kinds of behaviors, disciplines, habits really, are learnable. And increasingly, we're finding that educators are building them in their instructional practices. In the way they teach, maybe to a project based learning, or work based learning, where you are experienced with actual employer interaction. Environments where you can expose students to these kinds of skills that they may not get if they're isolated in a school environment, just going through lectures, and writing papers, and doing what they're told to do, but they don't develop those kinds of interpersonal skills that can increase learning >> Right. I'm having a memory, I think, of another conversation you and I may have had, on another webinar, about warning spreadsheets. Was it you? I'm thinking that this is ringing very familiar to me because the conversation was something like this, so we teach students, we teach employees in transition, whatever the cohort, skills, etc. But they're without context, and it's only on the application of these the knowledge and the skills, the confidences, that actually, an individual can practice, and hone, and understand the connection between the theory or the assignment and what that thing what that bucket looks like in the real world. And that's where the real competency comes into play. And without that we're sort of teaching in a void, almost a vacuum. >> But that's right. And many students find it hard just to memorize what they're learning in the classroom without having used it in some way that [INAUDIBLE] practicality in the real world. So it increasingly I think the notion of using applied learning techniques in the classroom is growing in the K-12 education experience, as well as the post-secondary. We've discussed this before but, in post-secondary education, particularly education that's leading to a particular career pathway, there is often greater effort to build partnerships with employers early in an academic pathway so that individual students can take what they know in the classroom, or go to their employer and see what that looks like in the workplace. They get some very practical exposure, or how mathematics for example are used in technology applications in the workplace or in control or whatever. There are much more persuasive instructional techniques beginning to emerge that focus on what you pointed you, which the implied learning by use of knowledge that demonstrates to employers more clearly what your skills are. >> Right, and probably speaks a little bit more to what your research shows in terms of competencies and the characteristics to which employers turned for potential hire, right a potential employee. I wonder too, if it would address some of that 60% mismatch that we have between what students are or are not doing in the classroom, and then what employers see when individuals turn up for a job. I think it's really interesting, the applied pieces is a fascinating untapped. I know that the State University of New York is certainly charging all of our campuses with applied learning opportunities, and it sounds like we're in line with what your research is showing.
