CTE Program Support |
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Developing Engaging & Effective CTE Programs
CEdAd works in CA, and with programs across the US... We work with CTE standards for YOUR State!
Providing current, relevant, standards-based curriculum is what educators expect from our products. Our instructional team's time is solely focused on analyzing, collaborating, researching, developing, aligning, and updating curriculum and assessments so that your teachers can focus on the most important part of their day: working with students.
When working with teachers and creating career and technical education (CTE) curriculum for use in their classrooms, they often ask us questions to determine if we are the right fit for their needs. Because some students go directly into the workforce after completing a program, CTE teachers are wary when choosing curriculum because students must be provided with correct dynamic industry-applied information.
Not to mention the fact that teachers need to meet state standards and prepare their students for certification! From strategy to articulation, middle school exposure to completer and industry certification, our team of experts are here to make your pathway shine.
With all of this in mind, districts and teachers ask us these questions about our collaborative CTE curriculum:
It's important to understand the process we use here at Collaborative Education Advisors:
Developing CTE Curriculum with the “Understanding By Design” Model. The curriculum development process we use at CEA follows “Understanding By Design” techniques. This model for development is a simple concept, but certainly requires detailed work.
The Understanding By Design model (also known as a backward design process) promotes starting with the end result or outcome you wish to achieve. Once the outcomes are determined, you work backwards to develop assessments and curriculum that will lead to that desired end.
So why did we decide to use the Understanding By Design curriculum development process?
Because educators have specific standards and outcomes students must achieve, it was only natural for us to develop content that focuses on those outcomes. In the standard- and outcome-focused world of education, we know how important it is to take some of that burden away from teachers. In addition, making sure that the integration of the CTE model standards, NGSS / STEAM integration, site initiatives, site resources, school scheduling, as well as industry relevant content, and keeping in mind teacher and community strengths and opportunities all contribute to our development rigor. We also do a pre-analysis technology and available EdTech integration survey to identify needs in PD and software.
How To Develop Standards-Based CTE Curriculum our team of professionals are dedicated to the the Understanding By Design model, we create standards-based curriculum in 4 steps:
1. Determine Learning Outcomes: Our team begins by deciding which standards to work from when developing content on a new topic. Typically, we begin with national standards, as those are relevant to instructors across the country. We will also review state standards to see where there are common requirements, in order to make sure the curriculum we develop has the biggest impact for our teachers.
2. Decide How Success is Measured: After the outcomes have been laid out, the Product Team must determine what would be acceptable evidence of student understanding, knowledge, and skills. A range of assessments are considered at this step, such as in-lesson questions, PBL's, career and capstone options, texts and articles, recommended WBL/ Linked Learning and case studies and activities with rubrics, summative quizzes, and summative and formative assessments as well as industry certifications and CTSO participation.
3. Develop the Curriculum: The actual development of curriculum has two parts: planning and creation. Each new module goes through storyboarding as a way to lay out what the lesson will look like before the design work actually starts. If you have instructors already teaching in their content, we engage them in the collaborative process, validating strong instruction content and adding rigor and new content where needed for full mastery of the standards and rich curricular overlay. When planning a lesson or activity, the Instructional Design team must balance how much time a student spends reading, watching a video, interacting with the lesson, and answering questions. It’s definitely an art!
Once the plan has been laid out, the design and building work begins. Using a number of tools, the topics come to life as hands on, PBL and digital lessons with multimedia content to reinforce the topics. Along with
4. Train, Review and Update: This is perhaps one of the most important parts of the curriculum development process at Collaborative Education Advisors. To us, a module is never truly “finished,” since standards and certifications are always changing! Contracting for a thorough mentoring in the first year, and training/ exposure to the curriculum activities and alignment allows for targeted professional development and investment in your instructors and rigor. Best practices are constantly harvested and shared. This is something always on our radar, as we want to provide teachers and their students with the most current, up-to-date curriculum out there.
Teachers like to know who develops the curriculum, and very often ask if we have teachers on staff. We have an awesome team of master educators, SME's, instructional designers, instructional graphic designers, and programmers that bring the curriculum to life, with a teacher dashboard that is loved by all.
We are the first to admit that while we are experts at instructional design and curriculum development, we are not experts on all of the topics! We work with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who weigh in on content and review the curriculum for accuracy. These SMEs are often educators, business leaders, industry experts or teachers who go through the curriculum to ensure everything we’ve included is correct, before it is released to our users.
How is Collaborative Education Advisors content different than lessons I create and find on free websites?
We’ve heard this from many teachers & districts so you are not alone in wondering!
There are plenty of teachers who create all of their lessons and activities from scratch. We applaud these teachers for going above and beyond to make sure their students get the best experience possible… it’s awesome! Unfortunately, for those superstar teachers, there is a big price tag to creating your own content: Time.
We have heard that it can take a teacher 10 hours just to research and prepare for creating a lesson. That’s not even time spent creating the content! Then, of course, state standards change, more time is spent on revamping those lessons instead of relaxing with your friends or family.
For districts and sites, knowing the scope, sequence and curriculum expectations and adopting it, allows for consistency in the content, transparency and the opportunity for engaging community support of the pathway. If you loose an instructor or expand a pathway, your content can be trained and quality in the content isn't lost.
Even if you save time by finding free lessons and activities on the internet, there are some things to be cautious about:
We do this work so that teachers don’t have to worry about it! Providing current, relevant, standards-based curriculum is what educators expect from our products. Our developer's time is solely focused on analyzing, collaborating, researching, developing, aligning, and maintaining the curriculum and assessments so that your teachers can focus on the most important part of their day: working with students.
When working with teachers and creating career and technical education (CTE) curriculum for use in their classrooms, they often ask us questions to determine if we are the right fit for their needs. Because some students go directly into the workforce after completing a program, CTE teachers are wary when choosing curriculum because students must be provided with correct dynamic industry-applied information.
Not to mention the fact that teachers need to meet state standards and prepare their students for certification! From strategy to articulation, middle school exposure to completer and industry certification, our team of experts are here to make your pathway shine.
With all of this in mind, districts and teachers ask us these questions about our collaborative CTE curriculum:
- How does Collaborative Education Advisors develop the curriculum?
- Does Collaborative Education Advisors program align to our CTE content standards?
- How is your content different than stuff I create myself or find for free?
- Who develops your curriculum? Do you have teachers on staff?
It's important to understand the process we use here at Collaborative Education Advisors:
Developing CTE Curriculum with the “Understanding By Design” Model. The curriculum development process we use at CEA follows “Understanding By Design” techniques. This model for development is a simple concept, but certainly requires detailed work.
The Understanding By Design model (also known as a backward design process) promotes starting with the end result or outcome you wish to achieve. Once the outcomes are determined, you work backwards to develop assessments and curriculum that will lead to that desired end.
So why did we decide to use the Understanding By Design curriculum development process?
Because educators have specific standards and outcomes students must achieve, it was only natural for us to develop content that focuses on those outcomes. In the standard- and outcome-focused world of education, we know how important it is to take some of that burden away from teachers. In addition, making sure that the integration of the CTE model standards, NGSS / STEAM integration, site initiatives, site resources, school scheduling, as well as industry relevant content, and keeping in mind teacher and community strengths and opportunities all contribute to our development rigor. We also do a pre-analysis technology and available EdTech integration survey to identify needs in PD and software.
How To Develop Standards-Based CTE Curriculum our team of professionals are dedicated to the the Understanding By Design model, we create standards-based curriculum in 4 steps:
- Determine the learning outcomes
- Decide how success is measured
- Create the curriculum (Collaboration with instructors to validate content that is already in place and align.)
- Train the instructors, evaluate and review
1. Determine Learning Outcomes: Our team begins by deciding which standards to work from when developing content on a new topic. Typically, we begin with national standards, as those are relevant to instructors across the country. We will also review state standards to see where there are common requirements, in order to make sure the curriculum we develop has the biggest impact for our teachers.
2. Decide How Success is Measured: After the outcomes have been laid out, the Product Team must determine what would be acceptable evidence of student understanding, knowledge, and skills. A range of assessments are considered at this step, such as in-lesson questions, PBL's, career and capstone options, texts and articles, recommended WBL/ Linked Learning and case studies and activities with rubrics, summative quizzes, and summative and formative assessments as well as industry certifications and CTSO participation.
3. Develop the Curriculum: The actual development of curriculum has two parts: planning and creation. Each new module goes through storyboarding as a way to lay out what the lesson will look like before the design work actually starts. If you have instructors already teaching in their content, we engage them in the collaborative process, validating strong instruction content and adding rigor and new content where needed for full mastery of the standards and rich curricular overlay. When planning a lesson or activity, the Instructional Design team must balance how much time a student spends reading, watching a video, interacting with the lesson, and answering questions. It’s definitely an art!
Once the plan has been laid out, the design and building work begins. Using a number of tools, the topics come to life as hands on, PBL and digital lessons with multimedia content to reinforce the topics. Along with
4. Train, Review and Update: This is perhaps one of the most important parts of the curriculum development process at Collaborative Education Advisors. To us, a module is never truly “finished,” since standards and certifications are always changing! Contracting for a thorough mentoring in the first year, and training/ exposure to the curriculum activities and alignment allows for targeted professional development and investment in your instructors and rigor. Best practices are constantly harvested and shared. This is something always on our radar, as we want to provide teachers and their students with the most current, up-to-date curriculum out there.
Teachers like to know who develops the curriculum, and very often ask if we have teachers on staff. We have an awesome team of master educators, SME's, instructional designers, instructional graphic designers, and programmers that bring the curriculum to life, with a teacher dashboard that is loved by all.
We are the first to admit that while we are experts at instructional design and curriculum development, we are not experts on all of the topics! We work with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who weigh in on content and review the curriculum for accuracy. These SMEs are often educators, business leaders, industry experts or teachers who go through the curriculum to ensure everything we’ve included is correct, before it is released to our users.
How is Collaborative Education Advisors content different than lessons I create and find on free websites?
We’ve heard this from many teachers & districts so you are not alone in wondering!
There are plenty of teachers who create all of their lessons and activities from scratch. We applaud these teachers for going above and beyond to make sure their students get the best experience possible… it’s awesome! Unfortunately, for those superstar teachers, there is a big price tag to creating your own content: Time.
We have heard that it can take a teacher 10 hours just to research and prepare for creating a lesson. That’s not even time spent creating the content! Then, of course, state standards change, more time is spent on revamping those lessons instead of relaxing with your friends or family.
For districts and sites, knowing the scope, sequence and curriculum expectations and adopting it, allows for consistency in the content, transparency and the opportunity for engaging community support of the pathway. If you loose an instructor or expand a pathway, your content can be trained and quality in the content isn't lost.
Even if you save time by finding free lessons and activities on the internet, there are some things to be cautious about:
- You don’t know who created the content
- The content could be outdated
- Free stuff can disappear from the internet at any time
- You still need to spend time checking for accuracy and making it work for your classroom
We do this work so that teachers don’t have to worry about it! Providing current, relevant, standards-based curriculum is what educators expect from our products. Our developer's time is solely focused on analyzing, collaborating, researching, developing, aligning, and maintaining the curriculum and assessments so that your teachers can focus on the most important part of their day: working with students.