|
Dear Friends:
It’s been quite some time since I last put together
a Newsletter and for that I apologize. The last
Newsletter was sent out prior to the Third Annual KeyTrain Users’ Conference and that was in early
February. Many things have happened since that time
and there is a lot to discuss.
This past spring’s KeyTrain User Conference was the best
yet! Over two hundred participants attended either
the Tulsa or Oklahoma City meetings to hear KeyTrain
users tell their stories about the program’s use in
Oklahoma’s businesses, high schools, technical
schools and agencies. I continue to be amazed at
the many ways Oklahomans are using, and benefiting
from the program. KeyTrain is making a difference
in people's lives all across the state. The reach
of the program has grown from two sites using it in
2004 to over 175 sites offering the KeyTrain
experience to those they serve.
The Users’ Conference was followed by the
National WorkKeys Conference held this year in
Indianapolis, IN. Here Oklahoma really shined. Six
program presentations were made by Oklahomans
discussing their innovative use of ACT’s WorkKeys
tests and the Governor’s Workforce Development
Council received well-deserved accolades for their development
of the Career Ready Certificate program.
The Department of Commerce reports that they have
now issued 20,152 Career Ready Certificates! 4,130
are Gold Certificates, 10,741 are Silver
Certificates and the remainder are Bronze
Certificates. And…job profiles have been conducted
at 60+ businesses across the state. A list of these
businesses is available on the Department of
Commerce’s web page. Please continue to encourage
those to whom you’ve issued the Career Ready
Certificates to proactively provide them to
potential employers as a part of the employment
application process. The word is continuing to
spread across the state of the value of the CRC to
Oklahoma’s employers.
A number of additions and changes have been
made to
the KeyTrain program since the last Newsletter. Be
sure that you’ve checked out the following:
-
If you haven’t looked at the Support section of KeyTrain recently, please do so. The national
KeyTrain IT staff is constantly updating the
Support page based on questions that you ask and
suggestions that are made pertinent to continuing
the user friendly aspects of the program.
Specifically locate the Career Skills Checklist
on which you can make paper assignments of the
Career Skills program to your students.
Additionally, a quick look at Check My Setup will
help you to determine if any of the software
packages needed to help KeyTrain function correctly
are needed at your institution. If they are, the
program allows you to add software at the click of a
button.
- The
Announcements section of the menu page has been
added to introduce new items/changes in the
program.
-
The new
View Status item, appearing under the Assign
Lessons, Assign to Student menu items provides
instant information on the student’s progress in KeyTrain. Several of the pieces found previously in
the Reports section of KeyTrain now appear in the
View Status section.
- KeyTrain RI,
AM, and LI pretests now automatically cover levels 1
and 2. The student takes the pre-test to be
placed in the appropriate level of the curriculum
and is offered Level 2
questions if he/she scores poorly on Level 3. If
low results continue, the student is moved to Level
1 questions. Based on the student’s scores on the
low end questions, they are placed in Level 1 or 2 to
begin the KeyTrain course work. This process
assures that the student obtains the
best learning experience.
- In
the Reports menu, you’ll now notice a new report
titled Progress Report. This was developed in
response to several suggestions from Oklahomans that KeyTrain allow them to develop reports based on
specific date ranges and courses.
- Organization
Course Settings is another recommendation that came
from Oklahomans. By adding this administrative menu
selection, administrators can now temporarily take
courses out of the KeyTrain program. Caution here
is important, however, in that some forget to
replace the course after the request initially made
for such an action has been vacated. (i.e. you might
remove The Job Search from the Career Skills menu
while training a specific business's employees.
Don’t forget to replace it as a menu item when you
begin to train a group of unemployed workers.)
· - Don’t
forget to use the Job Profiles section of your KeyTrain program while doing career counseling with
those whom you serve. Updated in March, this
section of your program allows your users to search
434 occupational
|
