CareerConnectED eXpanded

For our youth, we want to incorporate 21st century skill building within the context of college- and work-related activities by using a digital badging approach.

CareerConnectED is a place in our community.  It was built with the premise that youth deserve the opportunity to develop technical, social and critical thinking skills by exploring their passions. Youth do so by visiting YouMedia, creating in welding, carpentry and MakerSpace labs, participating in a community-wide summer internship program and/or completing digital badges.  Simply put, it is a great place! 

There has been a positive impact for disadvantaged youth utilizing CareerConnectED, but we need to provide a better continuum of tiered opportunities and to impact all disadvantaged youth with CareerConnectED programming.  Thus, CareerConnectED eXpanded. 

Our solution is to create more digital badging opportunities.  With the support of school districts and community leaders, we want to first build 21st-century skill building badges that would be embedded within a school day. For example, 10th graders might develop interviewing skills through research and role-playing.  At the next badging tier, they might be asked to interview a community person detailing a company and the specific jobs/skills necessary.  A 3rd tier could have students taking such information and presenting it in a verbal or graphic format. Think of the 21st-century skills being developed!

Students will complete a second badge of their choosing. Choices will involve career clusters, but all will have knowledge, skill and applied tiers. For example, an environmental engineering badge could include researching the validity of using solar panels in Ohio, job shadowing a person that maintains and analyzes solar panels for a local company and networking with someone globally to see how solar panels are used in another country. Again, think of the workforce skills being addressed and developed!

The opportunities for scaling are limitless! Others could use our model or badges already created.  The pinnacle scaling would be a badge-writing network to sustain the creation of relevant, thought-provoking badges. 

The skills necessary to prepare disadvantaged youth for the future are not learned quickly but need to be cultivated with a continuum of activities. Our solution addresses 21st-century skill building with a new educational model embedded within everyday expectations. Throughout grades 7-12, youth complete specifically designed digital badging activities that are framed by careers and community resources. As youth progress through school (or agency programs), they complete additional tiered, interactive badging opportunities of their choosing; all related to career interest and relevance, yet still purposeful in developing 21st-century skills such as creativity, problem-solving, adaptability, global awareness and initiative.   

Because of a manufacturing base, our community was thriving during the 20th century. As a community, that led us to be complacent about making progressive changes. Our community now faces some extreme situations: an aging workforce, a lack of new businesses, lower graduation rates, and one of the highest rates of opioid addiction and released inmates. By addressing the needs of our community, country and world, we realize that our disadvantaged youth need more exploratory, tiered, applied opportunities to develop entrepreneurial skills for the 21st-century.  We feel digital badging is the vehicle which allows us to provide such opportunities. 

1. Our youth will take advantage of and contribute to the solution, thus becoming people who are involved in the emerging professions of the 21st century rather than mere bystanders.  

2. Our community will be a model for others in assessing and developing professional and leadership opportunities for youth.

3. Our community will be recognized for its productive partnerships between in-school and out-of-school learning providers.

4. Our youth and community will benefit the most in the short term. Others choosing to use our model and join the learning design network will benefit in the long term.

Number of career-related badges created - At least 20 career-related badges created. All will be tiered and interactive, specifically addressing 21st-century skill development and a variety of career investigations.

Track badge completion rate - Community youth will complete at least one 21st century skill development badge and one interactive career investigation badge within their education or assigned agency.

Add partners to our design network team - Collaborate with an additional 3 community businesses or agencies and 2 more global resources for badges.

Our solution is innovative because our team members represent both K-12 education and higher learning institutions, as well as non-profit organizations, businesses, local government agencies and our chamber of commerce.  With this solution, youth are not only learning technology literacy, but also developing oral and written communication skills and critical thinking skills, along with global awareness – all crucial for a 21st century workforce, but not always developed within the confines of the classroom.

Our team believes that it takes a network of people, working collaboratively across education, business and government sectors to grow a 21st-century workforce. We value a strong community and have worked across traditional boundaries to identify the needs. Our solution involves human-centered technology because it starts with and involves the people of our community but ends with a much more global impact. Technology provides our youth the ability to access the digital badging opportunities.  It also enables  us to network with other communities for additional badging creations, thus cultivating collaboration, creativity, problem-solving and social responsibility. 

People will be able to access our solution on our website or possibly an app in the future. Accessibility to technology for our communities has not been a problem, because of school and agency programs. Being able to develop a range of rich, interactive career-related digital badging experiences has been a challenge. Whether assigned by schools or other agencies or as an individual, access to badging materials will be free to everyone.

So far, our team's plan has been sustained through other grant monies and the support of local school districts, specifically the Springfield City Schools.  Our hope is that, as we can offer more career-related badging experiences to our communities, others will want to participate.  Businesses and organizations joining our team to create specific skill-related badging experiences will be charged fees for participation.  There will also be nominal subscription fees for organizations to utilize some of the more specifically created badging experiences. Individuals wanting to better their career-related skills or to explore different career investigations will not be under a financial obligation to participate. 

Our solution is designed to unlock career possibilities for people.  The major factor limiting the ability of our solution to succeed is resources and time to create rich, tiered, interactive badges that are enticing to disadvantaged youth and develop their necessary 21st-century workforce skills. The career-related badging experiences need to be skill-building, but also provide disadvantaged youth with ownership for the experiences to have an impact and be validated.  For that to occur, there needs to be a network of resources, not only in the community but also globally. 

Progress has been made with our disadvantaged youth through the CareerConnectED programming opportunities. We have seen our youth embrace social responsibility and the importance of teamwork. We have watched them collaborate with community leaders as they discovered passions and received feedback from personal creations. Still, only a fraction of disadvantaged youth are being served.  By applying to Solve we hope to network with changemakers who have additional resources, along with the promotional means to grow, and expand our current work, specifically in the creation of digital badging opportunities, while also implementing our new educational model for developing 21st-century workforce skills.       

Our newly-formed learning design network team has completed strategic workshops with The Sprout Fund, a Pittsburgh-based philanthropic group.  Specific to digital badging, LRNG is the platform currently used.  Most partners aiding in the creation of digital badges have been from our immediate community.

We are not aware of any competitors for our solution.