Novel Curriculum

The National Center for Manufacturing Education (NCME) was established at Sinclair Community College in January 1995 to develop curricular materials for manufacturing education programs leading to the associate degree. The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided primary funding to the center through grant #DUE9454571 from its Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program in the Division of Undergraduate Education.

The Novel Curriculum presents one result of the NCME's efforts: a curriculum design for a novel associate degree program in manufacturing engineering technology. The program is novel in its pedagogy, organization, and content.

Contents

1.0 Introduction and Background
2.0 The Manufacturing Engineering Technology Program
3.0 The Curriculum Development Process
4.0 A Structured Approach to Competency-Based Curriculum Development
5.0 Assessment and Standards of Participant Performance
6.0 Relationships to National Skill Standards
7.0 Curriculum Outline by Cluster
8.0 Curriculum Outline by Typical Path Through the Program
9.0 Implementation Status and Future Directions

Overview of the Contents of the Novel Curriculum

One major goal of the NCME is to develop a novel, activity-based, competency-based, contextual, industry- verified, modular curriculum in manufacturing engineering technology that can lead to systemic change in the way technician education is delivered in the United States. Section 2.0 summarizes the overall nature of the proposed manufacturing engineering technology program. Section 3.0 summarizes the curriculum development process.

The instructional modules within the curriculum incorporate a novel pedagogy that emphasizes learning through a series of authentic learning tasks that give participants experience similar to what they will experience in their careers. The pedagogy emphasizes learning by doing. Section 4.0 presents an overview of the pedagogy and the module architecture.

The authentic learning tasks require the development of authentic assessment methods that gather information about the performance of participants in ways that relate strongly to their ability to perform at a high level in the advanced technological workplace. The results of the assessment activities are related to a set of performance standards to evaluate the level of competence demonstrated by the participant. Section 5.0 presents details of this process.

Many bodies have developed national skill standards initiatives in the United States over the past several years to promote improvement in the performance of employees in high technology workplaces and to provide a more uniform gage of competence. Among these initiatives are the SCANS Competencies (Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills), Advanced High Performance Manufacturing Standards (National Coalition for Advanced Manufacturing), Machining Standards, and Computer Aided Drafting and Design Standards. The National Skill Standards Board has provided some measure of coordination for these standards-development activities. Section 6.0 addresses the relationships between the proposed curriculum and various standards initiatives.

Section 7.0 presents the proposed curriculum. The instructional modules are organized within nine clusters for the convenience of describing the overall content coverage of the curriculum. The curriculum contains 67 instructional modules plus six courses to be taken from regular college offerings.

The modules are generally smaller than traditional courses to promote flexibility in the manner of proceeding through the program and to facilitate assessment of prior competency. Module size cannot be measured in traditional ways. Most existing manufacturing engineering technology programs are organized within traditional quarter or semester systems in which one credit-hour relates to one class hour meeting per week for the term. The instructional modules in the proposed program are based on the satisfactory completion of a set of activities in which the participant develops specified competencies. Time is not the major metric. Estimates have been made to relate the competencies in each module to the amount of time it would take to cover a similar amount of content in a traditional quarter-based course. Using this method, module size ranges from approximately one to two quarter credits.

Participants start the program with the module called Introduction to World Class Manufacturing, designed to give a taste of much of the complete program. It helps the participant appreciate the big picture of the goals of the program. A major capstone experience completes the program.

Section 8.0 describes how participants proceed through the program. There is no one preferred path. Rather, advisors would guide any given participant, using a form of critical path scheduling based on prerequisites achieved, near-term goals of the participant, and overall priorities for taking certain modules.

While the curriculum outline describes a complete associate degree program in manufacturing engineering technology, only a portion of the instructional modules are to be completed in the grant project. Section 9.0 discusses the status of the module development process and projected efforts for the NCME to complete the balance of the modules.

Click here to access the NCME Novel Curriculum.