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Career & Technical Education

Open Educational Practices and Career & Technical Education (CTE): The $1.9 billion investment by the U.S. Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program required over 700 community and technical colleges to create and catalog free and open instructional materials and program support materials that build capacity and innovate job-driven workforce development programs. The U.S. Department of Labor also funded a national open library, www.skillscommons.org, that enabled individuals, institutions, and industries to discover, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, and retain the OER produced by the TAACCCT program. 

ePortfolios and Career & Technical Education:  SkillsCommons has used multiple methods for capturing open educational practices in teaching, learning, and institutional ePortfolios.

Explore the collection of over 50 institutional and teaching video and podcast ePortfolios that tell CTE stories of how, what, and why they changed to more innovative and successful learning and employability solutions for their diverse populations of students.

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Aligning Workforce Development Programs with Industry Sector Needs

Strategic alignment between community colleges, the public workforce system, and business and industry was an integral component to the TAACCCT initiative. Many states and regions created meaningful strides to better align these organizations.

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Strengthening Student Support Services to Improve Student & Worker Outcomes

Student support services were crucial to helping students enroll, persist, and complete. A number of TAACCCT grantees implemented new procedures and policies delivered by new support staff, often known as navigators, success coaches, or career coaches.

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Programmatic and Pedagogical Innovations to Improve Student Outcomes

New academic and industry credentials were created as well as innovative teaching methods designed to engage students in effective learning activities.

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Story Telling: Effectively Communicating the Impact of CTE Programs

Learn how to turn your dry reports into communications that will engage your stakeholders and have them understand the significant value of your programs for students, institutions, industry, and the community.

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Workbased-Learning & Apprenticeship Projects: Sharing Program Strategies and Successes

Explore highlights of exemplary work-based learning (WBL) programs of study across multiple industry sectors and geographic locations. The WBL models shown here encompass a range of activities that occur at the workplace, such as job shadowing, internships, and apprenticeships.

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Campus Presidents' Showcase

In this podcast series, community college presidents discuss the impact that TAACCCT has had on their colleges.

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