SUPPLEMENTAL RESEARCH
ONLINE LEARNING TRENDS
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Career aspirations remain the primary driver for online education, with more than three-quarters of online students furthering their education for career-related reasons.
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One-third of online college students (32%) have dropped out of a college-level degree or certificate program in the past. These students are somewhat evenly split between that program being delivered online (39%), face-to-face in a classroom (34%), or partially online (27%). About half dropped out within six months.
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Online college students are selecting online programs for their flexible class schedules,given that they likely cannot attend a program with a set or firm meeting time. However, students are also identifying programs that can help them complete their degree and re-enter the workforce quickly.
Source:
Clinefelter, D. L. & Aslanian, C. B., (2016). Online college students 2016: Comprehensive data on demands and preferences. Louisville, KY: The Learning House, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.learninghouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/OCS-2016-Report.pdf
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The changing nature of work in the 21st century has serious implications for the job preparation role that colleges play in our economy. Rather than educate students for specific occupations or broad career fields as in the past, institutions now need to groom undergraduates for a more complex fragmented workplace with many overlapping pathways. The growth of alternative work along with the growing threat of automation and artificial intelligence replacing even many white-collar jobs in the future requires college graduates to learn how to direct their own learning throughout their careers. They will need to learn when, where, and how to upgrade their skills with employers unwilling to invest in professional development for freelancers in an economy where the skills needed to succeed are ever changing. Prospective students, and their parents worried about their return on investment, want career services as part of their education. The retooling of career services must start with making such offerings more accessible throughout the undergraduate curriculum, starting on Day 1 of college, and helping students realize the wide range of career choices available to them.
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The ability to transfer knowledge between the classroom and the workplace and back again is what gets new college graduates hired. A typical undergraduate’s life is a series of sliced-up learning experiences — in classrooms, in residence halls, on athletic teams, through research projects, or in study-abroad programs. Colleges should help students integrate what they have learned from each of those experiences. Our business is to promote learning no matter where it happens, to show it has no boundaries. Read More.
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According to the newest data from an annual Gallup-Purdue University study of college graduates, the largest of its kind, only 17 percent of those who graduated from 2010 to 2016 said they found their college career centers to be “very helpful,” with another 26 percent reporting that the career office was “helpful.” Less than 40 percent said they found career centers to be “somewhat helpful,” and 17 percent said the interactions were not helpful at all. Read More.
CAREER DEVELOPMENT, 21ST CENTURY WORKPLACE, RECRUITMENT, DELIVERY METHODS
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There’s a perception that baseline skills are a universal skill-set needed in any workplace. In fact, while it’s true that all baseline skills are in demand, we found the specific set of skills employers want varies considerably--and predictably--from occupation to occupation. There are clusters of baseline skills for every occupation. This report, we analyze how skill demands vary across job function, showing which skills are most important by job group.The first analysis in this report uses a ranked list of baseline skills specified in 25 million jobs posted over the last year to determine the skills that are most valued by employers in each job family. The second analysis in this report focused on the baseline skills that employers seem to have trouble finding within their existing candidate pool. Read More.
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Soft skills can be learned, but not through lectures, books or online. Instead, building soft skills should be viewed like a sport. It takes a combination of positive modeling, guided and repeated skill practice, and on-the-job application. Read More.
SOFT SKILLS
Skills and Applied Knowledge:
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Many employers feel that college graduates are falling short in their preparedness in several areas, including the ones employers deem most important for workplace success.
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The majority of employers continue to say that possessing both field specific knowledge and a broad range of knowledge and skills is important for recent college graduates to achieve long-term career success.
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Written and oral communication skills, teamwork skills, ethical decision-making, critical thinking skills, and the ability to apply knowledge in real-world settings are the most highly valued among the 17 skills and knowledge areas tested.
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Employers broadly endorse an emphasis on applied learning in college today. They believe that engaging students in applied learning projects would improve learning and better prepare them for career success.
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Employer Partnerships
Whether prospective students seek a career change or plan to stay in their current field, experts say assessing an online degree program's employer partnerships can be beneficial – especially as career aspirations remain the primary reason students pursue a degree online. Read More.
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Skills Gap - Soft Skills - Curriculum
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...but what we hear most often is perhaps even much more serious, and that is around the softer skills — critical thinking, problem solving, troubleshooting — which [are] central to an employee’s ability to be valuable, contribute and produce. A lot of organizations and institutions aren’t teaching to fill those skills gaps in an integrated way.
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Disconnect may stem from different environments (education & workplace). Students succeed in college through strict adherence to schedules, syllabi and study guides. Employees succeed in the workplace with creativity, adaptability and self-direction. To close the gap institutions must modernize their curriculum and the student experience. 1) Experiential Opportunities 2) Evaluate program viability and consider the job market – soft skills soft skills necessary for career advancement, like leadership, critical thinking and decision making. 3)Partner with area employers to inform program design - beneficial to both parties. The institution gains valuable insight around the skills necessary to make student success post-graduation, and the employer gains access to a pool of uniquely qualified candidates.
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Make sure your curriculum is responsive and agile to be able to respond to those changes. Curriculum that is highly applied, relevant and current, and I truly mean highly applied; we’re not living in a land of theory here. Every theory, every idea should be attached to something real. If you have that and you have faculty who are, in the best of all possible worlds, practitioners in the field, asking critical questions and engaging student in ways that makes them think very deeply about the materials, you will have a curriculum that is immediately useful in the workplace....Read More.
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