COMMUNITY COLLEGE CONTRIBUTIONS

July 13, 2015

As the United States continues an uphill battle to reform its education system and to re-establish its manufacturing dominance, many educators are seeking new and innovative programs to better prepare workers and students.

Tomorrow’s students need more effective training solutions and today’s workers need upgraded skills in order to cope with the ever-changing technologies of today and tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the delay in converting traditional classroom instruction into the more effective multi-sensory training solutions has been a stumbling block.

And yet, nearly half of our workforce do not sufficiently comprehend anything written above a 4th grade reading level, making traditional “lecture/reading” activities ineffective.

Currently, many small to medium-size industries lack satisfactory training programs for their employees.

Thankfully, more and more Community Colleges are beginning to address that need.

Increasing numbers of Community Colleges, in cooperation with area industries, are designing specific training paths for the local workforce that utilize the most innovative training technologies, i.e., multi-media based e-Learning.

As a Director at one such college remarked, “Our idea was to make our school a one-stop shopping training market where small and medium-size industries could come in and receive training advice and help.”

These cooperative solutions allow the schools to train the employees of local industries at a minimal fee, using training technology that might have been too costly for the small to medium-size industries to bear alone.

In addition, the Community Colleges will have the opportunity to increase enrollment while providing a better-trained and more productive workforce for the community.

There is now an additional path for Community College participation.

With President Obama’s emphasis on Community Colleges as a means for bridging our nation’s expanding skills gap, a new opportunity has surfaced:

Community colleges will be essential in educating the workers who will take the current 26 percent of jobs that require less than four years of postsecondary training and the 16 percent of jobs that require on-the-job training of more than six months, writes James Bessen, economist at Boston University School of Law, in the Harvard Business Review online edition. (http://www.aacc21stcenturycenter.org/article/data-matters-free-community-college-skills-gap/)

Multi-sensory e-Learning is ready to help our Community Colleges meet these challenges.