The next Distance Education Strategy Session, sponsored by Essential Education, focuses on building relevance and engagement to keep learners motivated and moving forward. This Friday, May 13th at 1PM EST, Ann Marie Przybyl of Literacy New York will talk about Teaching Soft Skills by Incorporating Workplace Readiness Skills Into Adult Education. James Brown III of Guilford Tech Community College (NC) will then share about Using Formative Assessment and Seat Time Data for Engagement and Retention. Following the lightning talks, presenters will be available for informal small group discussions. 

Looking for a fun, collaborative way to learn some new skills this summer? The TSTM EdTech Maker Space is a great service learning opportunity! In this EdTech Maker Space, we’ll curate OER and align them to 🌐 Civics Education 👷🏽‍♀️ Workforce Preparation 💲 Financial Literacy, and 🩺 Health Literacy topical frameworks. At the end of this group effort, participants will have learned about OER evaluation, skills/standards alignment, Universal Design for Learning, and more! The project starts on June 3rd at 1PM EST and will include three meetings and some asynchronous work.

The 21CLEO research team has been talking with workers across the country who have been participating in employer supported education or training initiatives. We have noted a pattern of little things that the supervisors in our data set have done that, in the aggregate, add up to support for working learners. In this blog, we share the experiences of two people whose experiences illustrate how an immediate supervisor can be a vital link in the learning and development of an employee.  

The Digital Resilience in the American Workforce (DRAW) Blog Series has begun. The first blog, Putting Digital Literacy and Digital Resilience into Frame, shares findings from the DRAW Landscape Scan specifically related to frameworks, standards, and competencies. This blog also references the EdTech Center’s resource, “Now More Than Ever: The Need for Digital Skills Frameworks,” that provides a compilation of various frameworks for defining the skills and competencies for digital literacy and digital resilience. For more DRAW resources and details, visit the DRAW Project here.