O*NET: Free Career Source

by Renee Tonquest
CTE Cluster Specialist
Health Science

Working over the past few months with the development of our new Career Portals materials has allowed me to become more familiar with the O*NET website.  O*NET is the nation’s free source of occupational information which contains hundreds of occupation-specific career descriptions.  This site is much more than a tool for the Career Portals course.  You can search for careers by keywords, your interests or you can browse over 900 career options sorted by specific industry. It may be used throughout your life in the event you decide to change jobs later on. 

Listed below are just some of the many resources you can access through the O*NET site. 

Career Exploration Tools http://www.onetcenter.org/tools.html

You can use these tools for self-directed career exploration tools to plan career options. These tools are also a great resource for students who are thinking about their future career plans. 

O*NET Work Importance Locator  http://www.onetcenter.org/WIL.html?p=3

The O*NET Work Importance Locator is a self-assessment career exploration tool that allows you to identify what is important in a job. It will help you identify occupations that you may like based on the similarity between your work values and the characteristics of the occupations.

Green Occupations  http://www.onetcenter.org/green.html

You can also specifically search for green increased-demand occupations, green enhanced skills occupations, and green new and emerging occupations on the O*NET website. 

Bright Outlook  http://www.mynextmove.org/find/bright

The Bright Outlook section highlights careers that will grow rapidly over the next few years; will have large numbers of openings; and are new and emerging. 

Professionals face aggressive competition for the most desired positions in the workforce.  It is essential to be able to use a variety of online tools to research careers and occupations.  Take a few minutes to explore the O*NET website; it may be perfect for you classroom or your personal life. 

Resource

O*NET OnLine. (n.d.). Retrieved June 11, 2015, from http://www.onetonline.org/

New Framework for CTE

by Kristin Petrunin Marketing Cluster Specialist

This fall I had an opportunity to attend the Association for Career and Technical Education Research conference in Nashville, Tennessee. The conference was full of great ideas for CTE students, educators, and administrators. Across all of the information presented at the conference, one specific idea seemed to answer CTE’s most pressing need. What is CTE?

Dr. Jay Rojewski and Dr. Roger Hill (2014) created an evolutionary framework for 21st Century CTE. The framework was not cluster specific and did not promise to contain all of the answers for the field. It was a solid starting point for addressing what CTE needs to become. Three components were suggested to create lasting and durable outcomes for students in the 21st century workplace. 

Final Thoughts
CTE is often accused of cluster loyalty instead of holistic career success. What if we started to address this framework within all career clusters? Have we become engrossed in relaying course content instead of preparing students for individualized career decisions? Is it possible to include this framework within current coursework?

Cooperative Learning

by Renee Tonquest
CTE Cluster Specialist Health Science

Cooperative Learning or grouping strategies are very well suited to classes in Health Science. Quality health care depends on the ability to work well with others. Just think about all the health care providers involved with a patient’s hospital stay. It takes a team of people working together to provide the best care to a patient.

Real world applications are perfectly suited for small group cooperative learning projects in the Health Science pathway. Students can be grouped by student interest, such as sports interests, drama/theater, by birth month, alphabetically, by shirt color, using a number countdown, or random name pulling.

There are three types of grouping strategies teachers can use to vary the grouping patterns in a class. They are Informal, Formal, and Base Groups.

Informal groups are small teams that are formed during class that can help illustrate class concepts. These are impromptu pairings that last from a few minutes to a class period. 

For example, the Health Science class may be discussing infection control. After you have introduced the infection cycle, ask students to form small informal groups with neighbor(s) and ask them the following questions: How are diseases transmitted from person to person? And, why do some people get sick and others do not? Allow them a few minutes to discuss. Then resume your discussion about infection control. At the end of the class, allow the students to get back into the teams to re-evaluate the questions.

Formal groups are designed to ensure students have enough time to complete an assignment that may last several days or weeks. When you are organizing a project for your students, assemble your students in small groups of varying abilities. Formal groups are designed to ensure that the students have enough time to thoroughly complete an academic assignment.

Base groups can be teams set up at the beginning of the year and can last for a semester or the entire year, for purposes such as updating homework, help with class duties, etc. They are created to provide support for students and add a sense of belonging. Base groups are a great way for students to have a small group they can call on for information and support in classes. 

Health Science courses real world applications give instructors many opportunities to have students practice classroom lessons in a way that touches many different learning styles and reinforces classroom discussion.

Resources
Marzano, R., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. (2005). Classroom Instruction That Works: Research Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement (pp. 84-91). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.

Health Science Career Preparation

Renee Tonquest
Health Science Cluster Specialist

Career preparation experiences connect knowledge and skills obtained in the classroom to those needed outside the classroom.  Career preparation is not a class; it is a method that enhances a related class in which a student is enrolled. The career preparation experience cannot replace the regular class instruction time and students must be enrolled in the related class concurrently with the career preparation experience.  

Career preparation is an excellent way to link CTE coursework and classroom learning with actual work site training. It gives students the opportunity to gain academic, occupational, and employability skills in a structured learning experience that reinforces standards that are taught in the CTE classroom.

In the Health Science cluster, the Health Science and Practicum in Health Science courses may be taught by instructional arrangements, such as unpaid learning experiences or paid learning experiences.  Each instructional arrangement is composed of classroom instruction using the TEKS as the curriculum framework and a paid or unpaid learning component.

Unpaid learning experiences provide students with the opportunity to explore a variety of health careers, develop knowledge and skills related to health care, and transition from student to professional. Students rotate among various departments of local health care facilities in the community to develop an awareness of the many career opportunities available in health care. Unpaid work-based instructional opportunities must be planned and supervised cooperatively by the local education agency and the training sponsor. In the classroom or training site, students are expected to master the essential knowledge and skills for Health Science or Practicum in Health Science.

Paid learning experiences provide students with the opportunity to gain career specific knowledge and skills through a paid instructional arrangement. Students receive instruction by participating in occupationally specific classroom instruction and work-based learning experiences.

Resources:

Texas Child Labor Law Poster

Training Plan Agreement for Paid Work-Based Instruction

Training Plan Agreement for Unpaid Work-Based Instruction

   

Health Information Management

by Renee Tonquest

Cluster Speciaist Health Science

 

Health information management professionals are the caretakers and guardians of patient health information. They represent the patient’s interests in matters of privacy and security, information release, issues and guidelines regarding record access, and general consumer education about personal health records.

 

According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, employment of medical records and health information technicians is expected to increase by 21 percent from 2010 to 2020, faster than the average for all occupations. The widespread use of electronic health records by all types of healthcare providers, should lead to an increased need for technicians to organize and manage the associated information in all areas of the healthcare industry.

 

I have recently participated in a sub-committee of the Texas HIT Workforce Development Project. The Texas Health Information Technology (HIT) Workforce Development project, funded by a Wagner-Peyser grant and supported by the Texas Workforce Commission, will perform a state-wide workforce needs assessment from all industry stakeholders and an educational program inventory from all higher education institutions. 

 

The sub-committee has worked on the programs of study for HIT available online at

 http://achievetexas.org/Health.htm.

 

The committee has also developed excellent recruitment videos for HIT to share with your students. Below are the links for each video type: 

 

Flash:

http://camrelay-stream.its.txstate.edu/users/sf36/HIT_Presentation_2_-_Flash_%28Large%29_-_20121119_04.13.07PM.html 

iPod:

http://camrelay-stream.its.txstate.edu/users/sf36/HIT_Presentation_2_-_Flash_(Large)_-_20121119_04.13.07PM.mp4 

iPhone/iPod:

http://camrelay-stream.its.txstate.edu/users/sf36/HIT_Presentation_2_-_iPod_and_iPhone_-_20121119_04.13.07PM.mp4 

 

Resources

 

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2012-13 Edition, Medical Records and Health Information Technicians, on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/medical-records-and-health-information-technicians.htm (visited February 18, 2013).

myPHR, Glossary of Terms, on the Internet at http://www.myphr.com/HealthLiteracy/glossary.aspx (visited February 18, 2013). 

Texas HIT Workforce Development, What is HIT?, on the Internet at http://www.health.txstate.edu/him/TxHIT-workforce.html (visited February 18, 2013).