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1. Facilitating Advanced Manufacturing Technicians' Readiness in the Rural Economy: A Competency-based Deductive Approach

   Jones, Faye R.; Mardis, Marcia A.; Prajapati, Priyanka; Kowligi, Pallavi R. (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   While rural manufacturing job availability is growing throughout the country, rural communities often lack skilled workers. Thus, it is imperative for employers to validate needed new professional competencies by understanding which skills can be taught on-the-job as well as the knowledge and abilities best gained through classroom learning and experiential learning opportunities. This enhanced understanding not only benefits employers’ hiring practices, but also it can help Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs improve curricula and expand learning opportunities to best meet students’ and employers’ needs. In this study, we triangulated industry competency model content with rural employer perspectives on new advanced manufacturing (AM) professionals’ desired competencies (i.e., the level of skill sophistication in a particular AM work area). To extract competencies for entry-level AM rural jobs, we used a deductive approach with multiple methods. First, we used Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract, analyze, and compare the U.S. Department of Labor’s AM 2010 and 2020 Competency Models because they reflect the levels and topics AM industry professionals nationally reported as technician needs. Then, we interviewed 10 rural AM employers in North Florida to capture their perceptions of the most important competencies for new middle-skill technicians. Interview transcripts were also processed using NLP to extract competency levels and topics; we compared this output to the AM Competency Model analysis results. We deduced that the most critical competencies identified by rural AM employers required direct classroom instruction, but there was a subset of skills obtainable through on-the-job training or other experiential learning. This study, with the goal of addressing employee shortages and increasing the number of technicians ready for the workforce, has implications for rural community colleges’ AM programs curricula and the role of experiential learning. 

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2. Comparing Florida’s Advanced Manufacturing Curriculum Framework to the Department of Labor Competency Model

   Kowligi, Pallavi R.; Prajapati, Priyanka; Jones, Faye R.; Mardis, Marcia A. (January 2020, ASEE annual conference exposition)

   In this research paper, we compare the alignment between advanced manufacturing (AM) competencies in Florida’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) AM Curriculum Framework and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Advanced Manufacturing Competency Model. AM educators are guided by state department of education documents that specify program content, while employers track the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that AM technicians require to successfully function in the workplace. The Curriculum Framework, created with input from educators and industry, shape AM curricula and course syllabi because they specify the learning outcomes that AM graduates upon completion of two-year AM degree programs. The Department of Labor’s Advanced Manufacturing Competency Model, crafted by federal policymakers and industry representatives, includes personal, academic, industry-specific, and managerial competencies needed by successful AM technicians; the Model is intended to influence technicians’ hiring, training, and evaluation. Although these documents were created by different sets of stakeholders, they “bookend” AM technicians’ school-to-career pathways. To determine the extent to which the 2019-2020 Florida AM Curriculum Framework aligns to the Department of Labor’s Advanced Manufacturing Competency Model, we used text mining to extract and compare the key competencies found in both documents. Through this approach, we compared these documents and identified: 1) frequently addressed topics; 2) verbs that guided the complexity (i.e., Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy of Learning Objectives cognitive level) of the course learning task versus workplace competency; and 3) overall match between the documents. Our results suggest that the documents overlap very little, with significant misalignments in higher-level Bloom’s verbs. We present implications for educational institutions, AM policy makers, and industry; suggest a revision cycle and process; and propose an ongoing assessment model to improve the congruence between what employers want and what is taught in two-year AM degree programs. 

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3. Assessing Educational Pathways for Manufacturing in Rural Communities: Research Findings and Implications from an Investigation of New and Existing Programs in Northwest Florida

   Mardis, Marcia A.; Jones, Faye R. (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   In northwest Florida, advanced manufacturing (AM) jobs outstrip the supply of middle-skilled technicians, though AM constitutes almost a quarter of the region’s total employment. Guided by the overarching research question (RQ) “To what extent do curriculum content, employer needs, and student experiences align within an advanced manufacturing educational pathway,” this NSF-funded study’s goals have been to 1) investigate the role AM program pathways have in meeting the needs of employers and new professionals who are employed in the region; 2) expand the research base and curriculum content recommendations for regional AM education; 3) build regional capacity for AM program assessment and improvement by replicating, refining, and disseminating study approaches through further research, annual AM employer and educator meetings, and annual research skill-building academies in which stakeholders transfer research findings to practices and policies that empower rural NW Florida colleges. To date, research efforts have demonstrated that competency perceptions of faculty, employers, and new professionals have notable misalignments that have opportunities for AM program curriculum revision and enhancement. This presentation will encompass four years of research output, emphasizing the impactful findings and dissemination products for ASEE community members, as well as opportunities for further research. 

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4. Critical workforce skills for bachelor-level geoscientists: An analysis of geoscience job advertisements

   https://doi.org/10.1130/GES02581.1  

   Shafer, G.W.; Viskupic, K.; Egger, A.E. (February 2023, Geosphere)

   Understanding the skills bachelor-level geoscientists need to enter the workforce is critical to their success. The goal of this study was to identify the workforce skills that are most requested from a broad range of geoscience employers. We collected 3668 job advertisements for bachelor-level geoscientists and used a case-insensitive, code-matching function in Matlab to determine the skills geoscience employers seek. Written communication (67%), field skills (63%), planning (53%), and driving (51%) were most frequently requested. Field skills and data collection were frequently found together in the ads. Written communication skills were common regardless of occupation. Quantitative skills were requested less frequently (23%) but were usually mentioned several times in the ads that did request them, signaling their importance for certain jobs. Some geoscience-specific skills were rarely found, such as temporal understanding (5%) and systems thinking (0%). We also subdivided field skills into individual tasks and ranked them by employer demand. Site assessments and evaluations, unspecified field tasks, and monitoring were the most frequently requested field skills. This study presents the geoscience community with a picture of the skills sought by employers of bachelor-level geoscientists and provides departments and programs with data they can use to assess their curricula for workforce preparation. 

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5. Are We Teaching What They Want? A Comparative Study of What AM Employers Want versus What AM Frameworks Require

   Jones, Faye R.; Mardis, Marcia A.; Pahuja, Divya (June 2019, ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   In this research paper, we compare Florida’s AM employer demands and academic requirements to state mandated AM curriculum guidelines. Florida is an AM leader, producing intermediate and finished products ranging from plastics to tortillas to motor vehicles. In total, Florida is home to over 20,000 AM companies employing over 320,000 workers. Florida is also geographically diverse, being simultaneously one of the most urban and one of the most rural highly populous states in the country. To characterize Florida’s AM employment needs, we analyzed 108 job postings from Florida employers who were seeking manufacturing and engineering technicians through publicly available job postings. Text mining was used to extract key knowledge areas (or topics) and verbs in these documents that AM employers identified in job postings and desired from their entry-level employees. We compared those topics and verbs to the ones found in the Florida Department of Education’s (FLDoE) AM curriculum framework for two-year programs. We found varying levels of alignment, and, in some instances, misalignment, between employers’ desired topics and competency levels and those found in FLDoE Frameworks. Our findings not only highlight the importance of industry-education partnerships to tailor preparation to employer needs, but also suggest that a deeper exploration and analysis of AM jobs is needed to further determine alignment to FLDoE frameworks. We conclude that the FLDoE framework may be used as a foundation, but not the sole source, for important AM knowledge areas, leaving opportunity for the development of an AM body of knowledge that reflects employer expectations and geographic variations. 

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