Bridges from School to College to Career (and How Best to Cross Them) 06-18

Bridges from School to College to Career (and How Best to Cross Them)

In life there are those key make-or-break moments that, if bridged correctly, take us to the next important phase in life. The transition from primary school to secondary school is one such moment. And from secondary school to higher learning is another.

Then there’s arguably the most important one of all, the bridge from post-secondary to career.

At any point along this journey, if any one of these bridges is not crossed properly (or at all), the ramifications for the remainder of a person’s life are staggering given the realities of life in the 21st Century.

And yet very little is done to prepare or assist the vast majority of Americans who make these transitions. A student is given a certificate or a diploma, the appropriate paperwork is filled out, and she is off to the next phase of her life.

Despite advances in technology, very little about what is known about a student follows that person through each transition. While transcripts will move with a student across each bridge, very little else will. Examples of student work, insights into the ways in which any given student learns best, and important measures of how students engage or work collaboratively or solve problems simply are not passed from teacher to teacher, institution to institution, or institution to employer.

This is a huge disservice, not only to students themselves but to faculty, institutions and employers. Insight into how a student scores on tests is simply not enough information – at least not any more. Whether a student tests well or not is increasingly irrelevant to how a student uses what she or he has learned in real-world situations.

The degree to which students are able to demonstrate an ability to deconstruct problems, source necessary information, and put that information to practical use is of far greater importance in our 21stCentury world. As is evidence of critical thinking, collaboration, entrepreneurialism and inventiveness.

All of this is an argument for portfolios—as part of the learning process and as a way for students to cross each critical bridge in their lives, bringing with them all the diverse, holistic evidence of their readiness for the next big set of challenges.

Portfolios used in classroom settings enable a new pedagogy that is focused on blended learning; the use of multimedia in instruction and student work; flipped classroom constructs; and project-based learning. Portfolios also encourage reflection, collaboration, iteration, and engagement with faculty and fellow students.

At Pathbrite, we’ve invented a way for teachers to create 21st Century ways to move standard lesson plans and syllabi into a construct we call Learning Maps. A course can be composed of a series of Learning Maps, each of which have their own set of activities. Maps and activities can be associated with a standard set of rubrics or learning outcome statements.

As students navigate these learning maps and complete each activity, they’re applying what they’re learning in the real world and bringing the application of that learning back in the form of digital artifacts. As activities are completed, the student’s course portfolio is being built out.

Feedback on individual artifacts or a whole portfolio is provided by faculty and / or fellow students in real time. Faculty also score artifacts and the entire portfolio along the way. At the end of an academic term, both the student and the institution have a powerful set of evidence about what that student learned and accomplished in the course, which goes well beyond a bubble test.

As students then begin to prepare to cross that last bridge from post-secondary education to career, they are able to curate from among all their curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, in addition to work experience they may have gained, to create customized portfolios for use in applying to internships or jobs. Employers are then better able to evaluate job readiness and an individual’s fit to available opportunities based on a whole set of variables that are most relevant to their needs (i.e., not grades).

We must arm our students with the right resources to cross each of life’s critical bridges. Moreover, faculty, institutions and employers must have the fullest possible picture of the human being they will be working with in order to set up the best possible conditions for success. Portfolios for classrooms and careers do just that.

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The New Student Performance Measures 06-18

The New Student Performance Measures

One of the many extraordinary conundrums facing educators at the moment is the disconnect between how students are currently measured and how it is the society they’ll graduate into would prefer they’re measured.

Bubble tests give us measures of students’ ability to memorize lectures and materials. Scores from ACT and SAT indicate readiness for higher learning. Bachelors and Masters degrees declare an acceptable aggregate score from a range of tests has been achieved.

But according to research by Gallup, there is a negative correlation between standardized test scores and entrepreneurial activity internationally. Why is this important?

While today’s employers look at college degrees as necessary – as an opening ante in the evaluation of an individual’s qualification for a job – the degree represents very little of the skills and abilities actually required in the 21st Century.

First and foremost, every citizen must have learned how to learn. Lifelong learning is a requirement for citizenship in the 21st Century. But beyond that, citizens must possess skills like collaboration, problem-solving, collegiality, and, yes, entrepreneurship in order to be productive, contributing members to society today (and to live richer, more successful lives).

These can be tough to teach and measure—tough, but not impossible.

In a talk by Brandon Busteed from Gallup earlier this year on their fascinating research into how people can be best optimized to learn and grow, he talks about new ways to look at student readiness for higher learning and careers after college. At the center of their findings are key factors called hope, engagement and well-being. They refer to these as the Economics of Human Development.

According to Busteed, hope, engagement and well-being account for one-third of the variant in student success, but we are not measuring it in practice. Moreover, Busteed says standardized tests are only intermediary steps to measuring everything we should be to more accurately determine a person’s readiness for citizenship, work and life in the 21st Century. If we combine standardized (a.k.a., bubble) tests with experiential and behavioral economic measures, we are able to better see a person’s true learning and potential.

Busteed recommends that one-third of how we measure students should be via the traditional standardized test; the next third via experiential measures; and the final third according to their formula for behavioral economics.

My company, Pathbrite, has been at work building and delivering the mechanism for the second and third pillars of these three measures—the experiential and the behavioral. Portfolio teaching, learning and growth enables applied learning – or learning by doing – and provides an evaluation mechanism that is both subjective and objective. It enables the student or the lifelong learner to make visible all the evidence of their learning and achievement, and, importantly, provides an effective mechanism for ongoing reflection.

Perhaps most importantly, however, portfolio learning and growth provides a way to engage with students that leverages all the tools of the 21st Century while helping learners understand where their strengths and interests lie. It also provides the mechanisms to illuminate the pathways that get students to where they want to go. And it gives students a greater sense of control over their own learning and destinies, which is a huge contributor to feelings of hope and an overall sense of well-being.

Bottom line? Portfolio learning in the classroom and in the workplace enables the articulation of goals, objectives and, finally, hope. It’s time we move beyond the bubble test once and for all.

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