Greg Hill Jr: All right, Hello. I'm going to go ahead and put our slides up, and we'll do some quick introductions before that. There we go. Can everybody see these slides OK?

Ute Maschke: Not yet.

Suzanne Sebring: No.

Ute Maschke: You're not in slide mode.

Greg Hill Jr: OK, let me try this one more time. How about that?

Suzanne Sebring: Yes.

Greg Hill Jr: Hooray.

Ute Maschke: All right.

Greg Hill Jr: All right, let's see here. So would you like to kick us off there, Suzanne? I

Suzanne Sebring: Would to move to the next slide, please.

Greg Hill Jr: Absolutely.

Suzanne Sebring: Thank you. So hello, everybody, and thank you for coming to the session today. My name is Suzanne Sebring, and I'm the Director of Postsecondary Engagement for-- had a recent job title change, so it says "Career Pathways Manager" in the program. And I am with the San Diego and Imperial County Regional Consortium. And my partners today are Ute Maschke and Greg Hill, Jr. So I'm going to pause and let them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about them. Ute?

Ute Maschke: Good morning, small but mighty crowd. I am Ute Maschke. I'm the manager for East Regional Adult Education, which is in the East Region of San Diego.

Greg Hill Jr: And I am Greg Hill, Jr. I'm a senior program manager with WestEd, and I work predominantly in the areas of postsecondary education and adult ed. And it's really lovely to be here.

Ute Maschke: Thank you. So our goals for today are to highlight our efforts to develop and streamline career education pathways within the San Diego and Imperial County region. We also want to share the process and the framework for facilitating vertical and horizontal alignment across our segments and share lessons learned and next steps. So I'll turn it over to Greg to do a little welcome and introductions warm-up.

Greg Hill Jr: Thank you, Suzanne. So we'll try to keep this brief. Mostly, we're just kind of hoping to get a better sense of who's in the room and to help us ensure in our discussion that we're focusing on the questions that you may have, some of the information you may be wishing to learn. So what I'd like to do is just quickly put a prompt in the chat and then have you-- not exactly waterfall it, but waterfall it. Just what is it that brought you to this session, and what were you hoping to learn, better understand, and do? And if folks can just sort of pop that in, that would be a great help to us. As we can tailor that conversation. So go.

Marvelous, thank you. Ah, C.I.P goals, interesting. There we go, yep. Pathway Group was trying something similar. Oh, yeah, OK. I'd be curious to hear what consortium you're part of there. Sarah, [inaudible] employment training partner Excelsior. Nice.

How many people do we have? Is this-- We've got [inaudible] got a couple other folks. Can we get one more? There we go, Jill. Thank you so much.

As we move through beautiful mid-Alameda, you're with me now. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. That's marvelous. Excellent, good. I know there's some good work happening over there in this arena too. Thank you, Lydia.

OK, thank you all so much for participating here. And if there are questions, or if you realize, you know what? Actually, this is an area I'd like to get more information on, at any point, feel free to pop into the chat or chat any of us, really, directly. And we'll circulate that among the group and see what we can to help accommodate you.

All right, so let's see here. Moving forward, Ute, do you want to talk us through this next few slides?

Ute Maschke: So by way of diving deeper in our topic, we wanted to provide a brief overview of who we are. We call ourselves shamelessly the Super Region in San Diego and Imperial County. We are a region of various education consortia. You can see them there on this slide-- six regional consortia serving about 75,000 students across the various program areas. What is not unique to our area, but still very important to consider, is that our areas cover extreme poverty and extreme wealth, rural and urban, with or without access to career training programs, to connectivity, to adult education programs overall.

We've been working as a super region for the last five years, meaning monthly on a very, very regular basis. Next? Which, when we talk about the super region, brings us to a question that we ask ourselves frequently as well-- why collaborate at the regional level? So we were curious what you might think about this. What would be the point, why is it a good idea, or is it a good idea to collaborate regionally?

We would like to ask you all for your suggestions to answer this question. We would like to give you about a minute to think about it, or maybe a little less, and then try to do a waterfall in the chat so that we have input from all of us at the same time. So the question, why collaborate at the regional level across adult ed consortium? What do you think?

Put it in the chat. I like that-- reduce redundancy.

Greg Hill Jr: I like that, reduce, thinking regionally. If they-- [laughs] that's good. Leverage funding-- a couple with reduced redundancy. I'm super curious about that. This is a pretty common thread that goes back to the beginning. I would really be curious to explore whether there is meaningful redundancy in the way that we often think there is.

Ute Maschke: Yeah, and also, Lydia pointed out that there are challenges that we're facing across the region, which for me is an interesting and important point to make. Which leads to the question, if that's the fact, what do we do regional to face those overarching issues and are still student-centered and tailoring our services to individual students?

So yeah, I think we are meeting with the same sort of purpose-- to review what are our resources that we can leverage, how can we support each other across the region and globally, and how do we address the challenges in a meaningful, sustainable manner? So let's dive deeper then.

One of the issues we want to address intentionally and consistently is equity. And we believe that we cannot talk about addressing regional issues, we cannot talk about equity, without including about education in our conversations. So our work collaboratively across the region is also with the intention to increase equitable opportunities for all of us. And with that, I hand it over to Greg.

Greg Hill Jr: Thanks, Ute. So as is pretty well known to most of you on the call, I'd imagine, in thinking about standardizing or aligning cross-segmentally in particular, but even across Adult Ed, there are some unique qualities right that make that kind of activity somewhat difficult. And here are just of a handful of what some of those challenges are.

Comparability in terms of just shared nomenclature. What I call a program and you call a program might be the same thing, but in terms of what we actually provide, there's no guarantee they're at all the same. There's limited standardization around program-level data collection and reporting.

So we understand that data moves in different directions. Some goes to CASAS, funded. Some goes to the state and ends up in LaunchBoard. But there's nowhere you can find CTE data, for example, right?

There we go. Kim, we're going to invite you to this next time. I'm only half joking about that. In fact, I'm not sure that I am joking about that. So I would love to speak more with you about that too.

You know, yeah, lack of clarity around goals of Adult Ed, program areas and populations. Not everybody shares the same-- there isn't always a shared understanding of who's being served, what adult is and intends to do, especially across segments. And I also want to just sort of note that populations piece in particular. We often define adult learners by demographic characteristics, and if you look across segments, you see really easy to reduce people to specific ones.

But in truth, adult ed, adult learners are complicated, and there are nuances in terms of-- nuanced differences among the populations that aren't necessarily captured by those variables. But those who actually serve adult ed students really understand that better.

So this is all to say that some specialized attention to really understanding who those populations are is really key to being able to build meaningful pathways. And finally, misconceptions among K-12, post-secondary, around AE offerings and where to put AE. So you often think about the state master plan for education, and I'd say at the top of it is UC, CSU, the community college system, and then K-12.

And one of the popular things to do is sort of wedge Adult Ed in there somewhere. But if you think about the array of what Adult Ed provides within the state of California, it doesn't quite work there, right? In some of what adult ed does, sure, fine. In other aspects of adult ed, not so much. The way that students move through segments isn't exactly linear, and Adult Ed is one of the mechanisms whereby adult learners and professionals can continue to upskill and even develop additional training for fundamental shifts in careers.

And so it's more complicated than, I think, it can sometimes appear on paper. Oh, I want to get to this SIP thing, Kim. So and actually, that's a really nice transition.

So one of the things that we did to begin the alignment process is ask a question, well, OK, if we agree that there is a certain challenge around shared nomenclature, what can we do to get everybody on a semi-similar page? And the thing that everybody agreed on, ultimately, is that we're in the business of trying to get adult learners into careers, right? And by the way, I think it was pretty clear, but the strong workforce, obviously, is focused on CTE training, so that was also informing our decision-making. So we worked backwards from there.

Before I continue, I did just want to make mention that the model and the work that we did is very much informed by others-- by a bunch of other people, including some folks, colleagues of mine-- Blaire Toso, Randy Tillery, um, Allie Bollella just to name a few. I just wanted to make sure that was understood and that, as a whole, we appreciate all their efforts leading into it, and helping with design, and so forth.

So thinking backwards from jobs. So we decided to think, well, OK, stock codes give us the occupations that students ideally will end up getting into, but how do we actually winnow down the array of courses and offerings in adult ed to zero in on where the comparisons can happen? And so we created this classification system, which those of you in community college may find similar to what is, in MIS, is a SAM code.

So there's tier one is workforce preparation. So these would be employability and general skills necessary for the workforce. So it might be typing. It might be-- what's another good example? Workshops, resume workshops, things like that that we understand are really important but may not be necessary-- or not necessary, to get back-- that may not reasonably be said to be part of an educational pathway or coherent course leading to a very specific job.

Next here, the occupational skills builder, don't confuse this with the concept of a skills builder. That's not how we're using it. But rather, this would be something like training that would provide core occupational skills or competencies that either augment or expand previous education or training. Refresher courses might fit into this, other professional development, or certification courses for individuals who are within-- already within a career. This happens a lot in nursing, for example.

And so before I move too far, just thinking about some of the questions that help to frame these tiers. And, then, lastly occupational training program. And this is what we really wanted to get to-- to be able to take all of the component parts and put them together, and/or highlight the sort of coherent sort of courses that already existed, so that we can do that comparison.

And so tier three's is basic courses or sequences of sufficient duration and intensity that develop skills for an individual to enter or advance in a specific occupation or industry. And I think this is where, if the other two tiers were somewhat unclear, the guiding question for this one, I think, clarifies all of it pretty well. Does the offering prepare students to enter directly into the job that it is designed to train them for?

And so the example here, numeracy, very important for any number of pathways for career OTPs. GMAW is one type of welding, but if we're really thinking about, well, going to get somebody fully into a career, we're really looking for welding, which might be inclusive of two or more of these particular certifications. I'm going to pause here to make sure all that's clear. And also, Ute, I'm watching you, and you're going to provide important--

Ute Maschke: Yeah, I want to chime in very briefly. What looks straightforward here for [inaudible] was actually a longer, rigorous process, where what drove us is, what is the question? What is the occupation, what is a job that is an adult learner can step into because of our training without any delays, without any additional trainings that they would need? So for me, at least, it was a very helpful and not so often occurring experience in backward design-- a very disciplined process where I look at the job that's out there and map it back.

And we need to be very honest in the conversation-- do we provide this training or not? Or, do we provide it almost, but something is missing? So and wedding is an interesting case because it can go into various job positions, so the backward design and the framework for how we address those has to be pretty rigorous.

Greg Hill Jr: Yeah, and to your point-- and I think in the San Diego and Imperial region, this is particularly notable because if we're thinking about some of the industries that are growing in California and, in some cases, in San Diego, think about welding, that might lead to a job in somewhere in advanced manufacturing or some such, right? But at the same time, in San Diego, there's a lot of welding that happens in shipyards, and that is a slightly different path.

And so thinking, starting with the job, really also provide an opportunity for folks to talk about, where are my students actually getting jobs? What am I genuinely preparing them for? And is my course actually somewhat different than the sort of courses that are offered by the same name? Are they leading to different outcomes? And that is something we're still working.

But after that initial process of winnowing down, what are we actually going to compare? We then clustered. So sticking with welding, based on conversations, like, you know what? Actually, this is an essential-- numeracy is an essential part of our welding course or occupational training program.

Then, the next step was to cluster these into that occupational training program. So it's like, OK, for the purposes of comparison, we are going to chunk these together as, this is what students need to get to the job we say we're training them for. And then, that's where the comparisons happened and the coding occurred.

In terms of the coding-- and this goes to a little bit, Kim, what you had raised here-- if I'm understanding you correctly, you mentioned using the SIP model. Are you talking about using SIP codes, perhaps? But I'm going to pretend like you were.

There are a number of different ways you can code information. So the rest of the country uses SIP codes and academic classifications. California does not. We have codes at the community college level, and then there's A22 codes for adult schools. And they vary in terms of their comprehensiveness and ultimately, I think, accuracy. It's level of detail differences.

If there were ever going to talk about aligning, especially vertically, say, to community college credit courses or credit pathways, then we, again, had to be able to get on the same page around what we're calling-- how we're coding these opportunities, educational opportunities. And so echoing what you just said, we work backwards from SOC, and so Standard Occupational Classifications I'm sure all of you are familiar with, belabor but we started there.

OK, occupational training programs lead to which jobs? And then, from there, we backed into a sort of triangulated coding process. So OK, these SOC codes align to taxonomy of program codes in what ways? They align to A22 in what ways?

And so through that recursive process, we're able to identify consonances as well as dissonances and collaboratively and over time work to try to resolve them slightly. And again, it's still something we're working on. But the process was really important and, I think, unique in that-- well, for a bunch of reasons. And I'll pause there.

Before I move to the next slide, are there any questions that I can try to help to address? OK, so Jill is asking, classification question. I'm curious, if you found gaps in your training for a given occupation, did you make programmatic changes to close those gaps, or did you make what you had fit? Ute, can you answer that?

Ute Maschke: Yes, and we'll get to that a little later, too. Yes to all of it, right? It's an ongoing conversation and process.

We did find gaps. Some of it might also be geographic, and geographically differing models of what's offered where. We needed to adjust some of the outcomes for our CTE classes quite dramatically. And in the conversation in our group, we also are exploring the assignment of hours with these-- the language we use to describe the same training program. So it's Yes to all of these aspects, and we'll come we'll show you in a moment what that looks like.

Greg Hill Jr: Perfect, yeah, thanks. Marin, is this from career pathways to college as well as adult schools? Oh, such a great question. So in a sense, yes. When we say occupational training program, it is more or less how-- it is the structure-- we're essentially saying a pathway, but the difference being that how courses and programs are delivered in Adult Ed are somewhat different, often, than in community colleges.

And you'll notice, I even stumble over terms like courses and programs, right? Because these have different meanings. So you'll have a course that spans an entire year in Adult Ed that leads to a specific job, whereas in a community college, we would-- and that of course might have multiple modules, or what might be a class, or is a set of classes.

But then, in the community college, those component parts are typically broken out. There's a more structured sort of semester type system. And so we wanted to be able to-- so we didn't use that nomenclature because, also, we're thinking in terms of pathways needed. So how about pathways among-- thank you, brilliant.

Yes, pathways among adult schools and colleges. Yes vertical, horizontal, and that's, just like the triangulation that's happening here in terms of the coding, that is indeed what we're doing-- trying to do-- in real life as well. So bi-directional. Wow, thank you.

Ute Maschke: Yeah, let's show you some more. [laughs]

Suzanne Sebring: Yeah, we're coming up to all that good stuff.

Greg Hill Jr: Suzanne, I want to talk through some of the lessons we learned?

Suzanne Sebring: Absolutely. So we found that course coding was one essential step toward pathway mapping-- so both horizontal among adult schools and non-credit, as well as vertical between adult schools and community colleges. Mapping to the SOC codes helped participants focus on the end goal of employment. And also, the lack of shared nomenclature, as you have spoken to in the chat as well, and classification systems for the educational training programs within and across the segments remains a challenge, but something that we're working on.

Digging deeper into the surface level alignments to assess the comparability, standardize, and integrate those things into a coherent region-wide pathway is even more difficult in the absence of a common source for programmatic information. And that is what made developing and keeping the data repository up to date so important. There was no other area that captured those CTE programs for Adult Ed in one location.

The repository helped begin the conversation to address questions like how and to what extent do we need to align the classes, how do we leverage similar but different educational opportunities, how do we measure the value and the quality of courses in hours or certifications? What is the value of the skills learner courses versus occupational training courses? Where do those different opportunities live?

We wanted to have a refined understanding of different student populations among the members. There's different needs for different student groups, so we wanted to understand that. And this process that we went into over a year ago to start developing the repository across our region, make sure that everything was-- all the programs and courses were in there and accurate-- promoted discussion across the members. It opened up programmatic conversations among instructors and refined marketing messages for students and employers.

That's in progress as we're just embarking on the horizontal alignment piece, and it's going to provide focus on program planning. And that's not-- as you mentioned, it's not just like Adult Ed to community college. It can be inverse as well. Our students have a lot of different on and offramps, and once they perhaps are trained in, say, as a CNA, and if they go into, maybe, transition into an LPN program at a community college and they're in the workforce, there are certifications that they need as they go through their career that they could come back to the Adult School to get those types of certifications.

So there's a lot of different options, and it's not just one way. It is bidirectional, as you had mentioned in the chat.

Greg Hill Jr: [inaudible]

Suzanne Sebring: I'm sorry, go ahead, Greg.

Greg Hill Jr: Sorry to interject, but I'm realizing-- and this, I totally forgot to mention the fact that we did something with the data, which Suzanne just alluded to. Because there wasn't a central repository, we made one and identified groups of individuals who are tasked with maintaining it. I think most of them are consortium leads. At least half, if not more than that, are consortium leads who periodically-- are periodically convened and have discussions about what's there and so on.

And there's a screenshot of it in a couple of slides from here. And we'll get to that in just a second, sorry. So OK, Suzanne, do you want to take that next slide, too?

Suzanne Sebring: Sure, so we realize that if the region was to be successful at alignment, it would need to have those conversations. We would-- Adult Ed, as I alluded to in the previous slide, contains full CTE programs leading to jobs, as you know, initial pathways that lead to community college programs, as well as certifications that working individuals need to keep themselves up to date.

And our aim is to identify how all of our educational systems contribute to the student journey and work together to make options easier to understand for our students and easier to navigate. Another way we can meet the student need is stacked credentialing, with multiple entry and exit points, where students can train, they can go to work, they can upskill, deal with unique life needs, and then, sometimes that means that the student may have to pause on their education. We need to give them the opportunity to pick up where they left off and continue toward their goals. So again, that speaks to that interwoven bidirectional type of collaboration approach that we are striving for in our region.

Greg Hill Jr: Suzanne, there's a question here from Marin. Can you explain more about that? Also, I'm getting a little bit of feedback. I hope that's just a way of saying, could you explain more about course coding and why it is essential?

This is the question. I'm thinking, Ute, can you address this? You're really in the thick of it.

Ute Maschke: I think that is, indeed, the question. So for various reasons-- and thank you for bringing it up-- there were two main reasons for us as a super region. Number one is that career training programs weren't really in a cohesive system or accessible across the region. We didn't have a shared container, a shared repository, a reference. We didn't sometimes even know what we were really talking about when we said, I have one name, and you have one name.

So we needed a baseline a foundation for conversations to get to the point where we can start thinking about alignment with the colleges and bidirectional exchange and resources. The second reason, the Centers of Excellence for Labor Market Research puts out really, really important data on what's available-- which training programs are available, which jobs are available, what is the outlook. And regularly in these presentations, career training paths, career training programs that we at the adult schools knew we were offering did not show up.

So for example, a very strong CNA program that we have in our region, those pretty impressive numbers of students, of training completers, were not counted anywhere which created a pretty important-- dangerous lack of resources available, or gap in resources available, training positions available, jobs to be filled. So for us to get sound data from the labor market research experts, we needed to show them what we have.

When we showed them what we have, we didn't have any codes. So labor market research analysts couldn't really help us because they couldn't search for anything. So coding became important for research data that is sound and accurate, and coding became important for any possible alignment with the colleges or even with industry partners. Industry partners have an understanding of SOC, but not necessarily of our educational coding systems.

Suzanne Sebring: I would add to that also that one of the goals is also to have-- now that Adult Ed has that repository, has that coding, it creates a better crosswalk. And, for instance, the San Diego Imperial County Regional Consortium has a Program Finder Tool that currently has all of the community college programs in there. So students or counselors can search and see where the programs are, what they entail.

We are working right now-- or we've been working-- to build out that tool to include our K-12 pathways and our Adult Ed programs and courses so that it really is a one-stop shop for educational opportunities in our region that can see what pathways align between K-12 and the Adult Ed, between Adult Ed and community colleges, K-12 community colleges, and, again, bi-directionally. So this is another one of our end goals and why it was important to have that coding done, because it's going to help us do that crosswalk and make this tool possible. [laughs]

Greg Hill Jr: Thank you, yeah. Does that-- I hope that helps, Marin, and we are going to get a little more into this too. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, see? It's good.

Yes, in fact, let me just-- this is what it looks like. Then, I'll go back. So what we did is we created it in Google. Since everybody had access, it would be easy to maintain.

I don't know if it'll stay there forever, but it's working pretty decently for now. Each agency was given a worksheet that they would populate based on-- with a number, populate that based on what they were offering. And there are a number of fields here, some of which aren't listed. And we actually added some additional ones, separated others out over the last year or so.

So for example, we have duration-- weeks, hours of instruction. We've since added internship/externship hours. We've added, I want to say-- oh, yeah, whether it's IET or IELCE. I think we can probably share. I'd have to check permissions, but minimally, if you're interested in a copy, I don't see a problem providing that as well.

Well, that is what you're asking, sorry. I missed "copy." I don't see a problem with that personally, but I'll need to circle around with the folks who are the owners, ultimately. But yeah, I'd be glad to share any of the info.

Yeah, I was going to say, they're not really sensitive, right? It's just sort of-- it's doing due diligence. But absolutely, be glad to.

Let's see here. There are a few other fields, too, that we added, just based on learnings derived from using it and trying to have those conversations. There are other fields that we may well, in the long term, move away from as well.

The goal here, ultimately, was what can we put together that would be accurate and easily enough maintained-- and, frankly, would be organized in a way that would help make it usable for the more important conversations that were needed to be among adult schools, community colleges. We wanted it to be a tool that was indeed used and not an academic exercise where the result sat on a shelf somewhere and people referred to it as the thing they did several years back-- which is often the case.

Ute Maschke: So to Marin's point, very important question-- who would use this? So this is not student, user-facing. This is an internal tool for our supervision and assigned persons to start, continue, give out conversations toward what Suzanne already mentioned-- eventually, a program finder that will be user-facing.

But as before, I think for me it has always been very important and helpful to keep in mind that notion of backward design. When we discuss, what do we want to include in this repository, and avoid that this repository becomes this gigantic file folder, we needed to focus on the occupation that's at the end of this pathway or this pathway. What is the job my student will be able to take based on the training I offer, and what do I need to as a student, what do I need to as an advisor or to share with the student about this class?

So in addition to codes, there needed to be a title. There needed to be a description-- the duration of that class, the hours associated with that course or program, any certificates-- that is something we added in later, industry certificates aligned with that class-- always with the focus, what does the student need? How do we prepare the student for the actual position that's at the end of this POP?

Greg Hill Jr: Excellent. You can see [inaudible]

Ute Maschke: Yeah, we could do that.

Greg Hill Jr: Yeah, just to echo, though, we are in the process of adjusting. And so yeah.

Ute Maschke: Jill, with your permission, can we hold off with this question? We'll come back to it. I think we might want to show some other steps we have taken in the meantime to arrive at that next question. Thank you, though.

Greg Hill Jr: OK, all right, so I'm going to step back here to-- so that, Suzanne, you can talk to where we've gone and where we're going. Sorry, let me go back.

Suzanne Sebring: OK, so this is our steps, from creating the repository to the communities of practice. And it displays the overall data project in phase one. Those are items that we've already completed, so in the light yellow, including establishing the central location for the programs and populating the repository with Adult Ed CTE. And so that was the repository that you just saw, where we populated all the programs, identified the codes-- the A22, codes the TOP codes and the SOC codes so what jobs those OTPs related to.

In addition, we were doing the coding alignment work, which was integrating non-credit into the repository at the community colleges. We reviewed and discussed and determined the approach to integration and expanded the group to include all CCs. So that's something that we needed to do because there are non-credit programs at community colleges that are similar or the same as some of the Adult Ed programs. So we needed to see what those differences were and what the outcomes of those courses and programs were.

So we created this community of practice that, as Greg had said earlier, it's mostly consortium leads. There's also some others-- like there's data. For one of our consortiums, we have, actually, a data manager, and so that is the person that is representing that consortium at these meetings.

But in these community of practice meetings, we talked about the process and what would be most effective in keeping the tool up to date, and the frequency it would need to be updated, those kinds of decisions were made with that community of practice. And then, having some of the leadership engagement, making sure that everyone knew what was happening, that was in three different forms.

One is our regular super region meetings that we had. Also, the data community of practice members going back to their schools and talking to their administrators to make sure that everyone was on board and knew what the program was attempting to do. And then, the next step, which is phase two-- that's happening this year-- is prioritizing the programs, deciding on an approach for aligning horizontally-- that's our first step, is to horizontally align among Adult School and non-credit.

And the first, we'll get to it as we move forward, but the first area that we are tackling as a region is health. So we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go on with the presentation. So also, in phase two, we're coordinating with the developer to define fields and upload that CTE data into that program finder tool. And we'll be able to, at least, provide a link, or even bring it up at the end, at the end here during questions.

But I can show you what the Program Finder Tool looks like currently with just the community colleges in there and our plans to expand. We're working on wireframes right now for how all of that information is going to look when we include K-12 and adult education into that tool. We are conducting, again, our horizontal alignment this year, starting with health, and we are trying to adapt and improve our programs and practices as we do this work.

And as we learn where those alignments are, where they're a little different-- that maybe the same program is 400 hours over here and 200 hours over here-- we're needing to have those conversations to determine is it because one includes external internships? Why is there that difference? And do we need to maybe change the name so it's easier for students to identify what those differences are, or is there a need for some curriculum alignment? So that's one of the things we're doing this year.

So in phase three we're wanting to-- which is the third, our plan for next year-- is to maintain the accurate information in the program finder making sure we have a system to pull in the adult education data into that system that's up to date, and that everything is working as we hope it will be in that new tool. That includes all the different levels-- the K-12, the Adult Ed, and the community colleges.

We're going to be then starting, and after we finish the horizontal alignment for all of our programs, we're going to start the vertical alignment-- so between adult education and the community colleges-- to see, to try and complete those pathways, make sure that there's no gaps, see what needs to be addressed to make sure that the students that want to transition into post-secondary have a clear and complete pathway. And again, some pathways may go right to employment. So it's a both-and situation when we're looking at this information. And then, ongoing sharing and program implementation and program improvement as we move forward. And on the right, you'll see our overarching goals on the project.

Greg Hill Jr: And to quickly chime in--

Suzanne Sebring: Yeah.

Greg Hill Jr: --I really just thinking, Ute, you had mentioned the repository isn't outward-facing. And what comes to mind for me is the importance of having both-- something that can help convey or make visible what opportunities are available to students, as well as have something that is a touch stone and so harking back to that original question of, why do the coding at all? I just keep thinking, [inaudible] if internally we don't know what the pathways look like, then students won't either.

And so it's also itself a reflexive process that-- and I think what's unique about the [inaudible] is it really does take that endpoint of most students learning journey as the shared focus. And anyway--

Ute Maschke: If I may add to this, yes, because it's also the way for us, I think, to avoid a dive at being wedged into something and matter on its own accounts and in alignment with other systems. So the end and both end is important, because that's where that education thrives-- that a path can lead directly into employment and is the complete path. The class can also be extended and become a more extensive-- a more complete path by leading into college and aligning with career training programs at the colleges, or preparing someone from Adult Ed for a University program.

So Adult Ed has a very important unique space for adult learners. And that that coding project, which led to the repository, which leads to a finder, is exactly the sort of way we can carve out or want to consolidate for that education.

Greg Hill Jr: And it's a long process. Yeah, I mean, it's been a couple of years to get to where we are. But it's been a good--

Let's see if we can go next one. OK, so here is just an example of some of what the repository has yielded, moving into some of that alignment work. OK, yeah, that alignment work, more substantive alignment work, and having that sort of initial phase of massaging and curating is what's making it feasible. And so we're starting with health-- I feel like, yeah, I'm getting so much feedback, and I feel really terrible about this. And I don't know how to fix it.

Is this any better, or worse? Better? OK, cool. Thank you.

So just sort of taking a look here the repository really kind of moved us, and then an initial coding clustering process and the conversations that have ensued between them, have really set us up for the conversations we're going to have moving forward. And even just based on what we have, there was that early question about, what gaps are you seeing?

Just having a place to go shows us quickly, well, what gaps are there? Literally, I did this in three seconds, you know what I mean? It was like, I just connected it with a pivot table and could see, wow, there's only one registered nursing program in the entire region across San Diego and Imperial that is a non-credit, that is not credit-bearing necessarily.

And same, similar things with optical training. I don't know exactly what the needs are, but that's only at a college. So et cetera, et cetera, and so again, we're moving into-- and thank you-- into our next phase. We're really going to zoom in more into the substance of what differentiates or doesn't differentiate some of these occupational training programs. And that's when the hard conversations are really going to occur.

In the end, what we're really hoping to see is, yeah, to see folks collectively get on board with making changes to their programs based on a shared understanding of what the needs are. And some of that might be really substantive, where it's understanding we need to augment or adjust our forces or deliver them very differently than we currently do. It may also result in changes in how the programs are presented to students.

We look at-- go to any Adult Ed website, and you'll see many of the same programs, but in some cases it's just slightly different descriptions or slightly different titles-- in some cases, very different titles, or very creative ones. But is that actually helping students understand what's being offered, and shouldn't they be able to compare apples to oranges on their own?

Likewise, another end goal here is to see-- mentioning the not bidirectional, but Adult School to Adult School type alignment, I often think about how a student can enroll in a college, and that student can transfer to another collagen bring credits with them. That isn't necessarily true of Adult Ed. And wouldn't it be quite a thing to be able to have someone begin a program-- a robust occupational training program-- at one Adult School and then, if circumstances dictate a move, that they'd actually be able to finish it at a partner Adult School with the knowledge that, yes, we all understand our curriculum is aligned, and we have those on and off points and did that intentionally?

So because there's so many other CTE pathways and adult schools all based off-- no, no, they are not. Or rather, there is remarkable variation in this. Health is one of the most highly regulated, which is why we're kind of-- yeah, it is, yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting.

Adult CTE programs were largely born of necessity-- talking with employer needs-- employers, understanding needs, and developing trainings to put people into the workforce where it was needed. There are certainly different bodies that provide certifications, and I'd say that most-- most of the ones that I'm aware of-- tend to develop curricula such that, yeah, folks get prepared to pass the industry value certifications. Welding is a good example of this.

But in terms of curriculum, or standards in a traditional sense, not necessarily-- sometimes not at all. Ute, can you hop in on this one?

Ute Maschke: Yeah, so that makes a really important point. Flexibility and agility are two strengths that teachers and providers have, Yes. The two things come to my mind with this-- this slide we're seeing right now. I think that addresses also the question that Jill had way earlier.

Did we discover gaps? Yes. How come there's only one program in one area, and why are there so many in another area, not across our region?

Did we make adjustments to some? In a way, yes. We started to talk about creating the common language for welding programs, for example, which are much less industry-regulated than health. Health is complex, but, in comparison to some of the other training programs we provide, kind of easy to streamline because they're so heavily industry-regulated and the requirements are somewhat clear.

So for welding, for example, we are trying to start talking about shared language and determine, what are the reasons we need to have to be able to explain to a student why this eight weeks and the other one is 16 weeks when the outcome seems to be the same? Why is one has a fee of 300 and the other one has a fee of 900 when the outcome seems to be the same?

So which might, in our school systems, also lead to conversations about, why are we charging different fees to different schools? Interesting conversation to have. Not an easy one.

And also, are there certain programs-- and that is also a very different conversation-- that we want to let go of at one school because it's offered in a different shape and form at another adult school, based on the needs of our students? So currently we are thinking about, in my consortium, to hand over a really well-developed construction program to another consortium.

So we have the business partners. We have an awesome curriculum. We have an instructor. However, we don't have the students for it. So we know that another consortium has the students. So this kind of exchange and leveraging resources might become more and more important for us.

And schools sometimes in the past-- and none of them in this room has ever, nobody in this room has ever done that-- but some of the schools also just run training programs because we have always done it. This work helps us all to develop a common understanding how to read, how to transform, how to work with the business partners and realign, redevelop, redesign our programs. Have I put some comments in on our medical programs? Yes.

But I just wanted to point out, this conversation also helps us to together reshape what it is we're doing in the adult education sector. So this theme of the summit is, the power is yours. It's actually, the power is ours. So I think this tool helps us to have these discussions.

Greg Hill Jr: So there are a couple comments here, and Jeff, to your point, yeah, absolutely, health is what you're saying is one of the areas where there's a lot of regulation and such. And where there are accrediting boards, no Adult School worth their salt isn't designing courses toward them. But yeah, but outside of health, it can be the Wild West, depending on the program area.

But that is a really good reminder. And then, Yuleen you mentioned, Yeah, WestEd did something similar, aligning K pathways, coding alignment. It could have been us, actually. But it could also be what you're referring to is some work, the larger-scale work that we did, where it was trying to gather an inventory for the state.

And that is one of the things that helped inform the more local work that we're doing. There's a big difference between, once you-- high level paints one picture. Local often looks very different. And that did end up informing a tool-- I forget what it's called. I always forget what it's called, but I can find it.

It's out there. I know that it's often a part of some of the webinars that Blair and Randy do. Yeah, oh, and I totally skipped Karen. I'm so sorry. But you are remembering correctly, just at a different scale.

Same fee, same classes, to echo Ute, no. [laughs] Yeah, not at all. But anyway, let's see here. I'm going to go ahead and move forward here. Let me just see. OK, Ute, do you want to talk about what comes next?