NITIC to Build on ITSS Project Outcomes
The “IT Skill Standards 2020 and Beyond” project grant – funded by the National Science Foundation and based at Collin College in Texas – sunsets at the end of August 2024. From 2019 to 2023, ITSS convened dozens of IT industry leaders, both executives and technicians alike, from across the country for multiple meetings to create concrete, actionable data on what IT students need to know. The ITSS grant’s future-facing output – which includes knowledge, skills, abilities, and tasks; employability skills; key performance indicators; and student learning outcomes – will be posted on NITIC’s website and used as a foundation for further employer-led revisions and updates going forward using the BILT Model.
The BILT Model provides a framework for educators to better engage employers by making them co-leaders of a technical program through frequent meetings and an annual prioritization vote and discussion of entry-level job skills. When employers feel valued and can see that their feedback is helping improve a program, they become extremely invested in a school’s faculty and students. The ITSS project adapted and adopted the BILT Model first to identify key job clusters and then later to create skill standard materials that go beyond knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Christina Titus, Program Director Grants at Collin College, explained “At the first engagement with employers to discuss in-demand IT jobs, we all thought this grant would just be about the skill standards. We had no idea we were creating a process that would become just as valuable. The process of working with employers ultimately became a product of the grant alongside the skill standards. We watched faculty and administrators from IT and other disciplines learn how to implement the process and put it into practice at their own schools. In the end, the work of ITSS went beyond the original scope of impacting students through updating skill standards. We also ended up helping faculty learn how to strengthen business engagement to help propel their own programs.”
All of ITSS’ legacy resources – including detailed process documents explaining step-by-step how to use the BILT Model to develop skill standard products – can also be found here: https://bit.ly/ITSSLegacy.