CASAS WORKFORCE LEARNING SYSTEMProject Summary Report 1999 - 2000Prepared by Cindy Burnside and John Schoolen WORKFORCE LEARNING SYSTEM (WLS) PROJECTThe Indian Hills Community college (IHCC) Workforce Outreach Team completed another successful year of their project. We worked with several companies delivering a variety of services: setting up state training plans, doing workplace analysis's, assessing employees, reporting results to the company, assessing basic skills of new employees, setting up basic skills classes. Our Community College recently went through a restructuring process. The Workforce Outreach Team is now in the Customized Learning Department. The CASAS National Trainer, Cindy Burnside, is now a private consultant. These changes shouldn't affect our ability to deliver quality Workforce Learning Systems' training to business and industry in our area and state as well as provide WLS training to other community colleges to help them meet these workforce needs. We traveled to Southwestern Community College at Creston, Iowa last year to help them learn the process of presenting the WLS to a candy company in their town. This past year we went back to complete the WLS training. This involved basic skills analysis of 13 different job positions at the candy company as well as writing the company report. The company was sold and the next plant manager ended the entire training project. It has been sold again and there is a possibility that the training will continue. This is a situation that seems to happen frequently when working with business and industry. This past year we worked with four companies in four towns with four different approaches to basic skills classes. One company was completing their training agreement and needed to provide their employees with a twenty hour basic skills math class to be held off site not on company time with an incentive of a $100 gift certificate. Another company has been using the CASAS Appraisal in their new employee orientation. They then provided a volunteer, twenty hour math class to any new employee. The class was two hours a week for ten weeks. One hour was on company time the other hour was overtime. The third company wanted their maintenance workers to be assessed with the CASAS basic skills appraisal and a twenty hour math class to be delivered on Saturdays as part of their job. The difficult part of meeting the needs of these three companies was getting workplace ready instructors to teach the math classes at three different locations at the same time. We used two experienced instructors and were able to complete the classes with excellent class evaluations. Another challenge met and solved. The fourth business we worked with contracts their services to a large corn milling company. They wanted the complete Workforce Learning systems: job analysis of pipefitters and millwrights, assessment of every employee and basic skills classes. We completed two of the three steps and will deliver the basic skills training when the company is ready. Our project took the lead in the state for using the CASAS computerized software TOPSpro in all Adult Basic Education programs as well as with Business and Industry. We are now able to collect and report our assessment results to individual employees and create customized reports for the company at our site instead of sending scannable answer sheets to CASAS in California. Our two TOPSpro specialists are now qualified to be state trainers able to get other Iowa community colleges up and running with this powerful CASAS accountability system. Certification for attained writing competencies using the CASAS Writing Assessment was an important initiative for Iowa this year with our project being a part of this process. With the help of the CASAS writing experts, state CASAS trainers and state leaders in adult education we were able to complete the narrative to define the necessary competency statements for the student certificates in levels A,B,C, and D. A CASAS trainer from Kansas came to Iowa and trained approximately 50 teachers to administer the CASAS Writing Assessment and completed the steps to be certified readers and scorers. Each year brings greater understanding of the Business and Industry needs for education and training as we move forward in the 21st century. What skills deficiencies exist? What specific training initiatives have companies undertaken to correct the weaknesses? What skills will be needed in the future for jobs that are changing rapidly? These are the questions we face as we help our business and industry partners plan for the future. We face every situation as a challenge to increase our ability to help employers recruit, retrain and retain.
Posted August 2, 2000 |