Career placement is a weighty consideration for students entering college. Students and parents want to know that the program they choose to join will teach them what they need to know to pursue a particular career. Curriculum planning can help clearly show the connection between education programs and occupations.
Why Is It Important to Match Program Curricula to Occupations?
Matching a program's curriculum to relevant occupations will set current students up for success. It will also encourage applicants to trust you to help them attain their future career aspirations. College is a huge investment, and students want to know they're likely to see a return on it.
Using curriculum mapping, you can strengthen the alignment between the workforce sectors and postsecondary education. Curriculum alignment that starts with data analysis is critical, whether part of a traditional or competency-based education program. Using analysis tools, colleges can establish stronger ties to employers while keeping student learning relevant to the competencies demanded by the industry.
Taking direction from this curriculum, employers can customize their job ads to include required academic competencies, thus creating bidirectional partnerships where each party's contribution is valued.
What Is Curriculum Mapping?
Curriculum mapping is the process of diagramming a curriculum to address misalignments, redundancies, and academic gaps to improve a course's effectiveness and coherence. As the term "curriculum" encompasses instructional techniques and materials, curriculum mapping refers to the alignment of teaching and learning standards.
A coherent curriculum is defined as one that is:
- Aligned across grade levels, subject areas, courses, and lessons
- Free of unnecessary repetition and academic gaps
- Purposefully designed to facilitate learning
How Can Curriculum Mapping Connect College Programs to Career Skill Sets and Demands?
We know how important it is to foster career readiness skills for college students, and that's why we offer software emphasizing collaboration and empowering curricula. Watermark helps you link curricula to learning outcomes using an intuitive curriculum management workflow.
Curriculum mapping is part of an ongoing process of assessment of programs and courses. It allows administrators, employees, and students to get on the same page regarding the relationship between learning outcomes and what students do in courses and programs. The process of curriculum mapping ensures a curriculum is systematically aligned with program outcomes.
Other benefits of curriculum mapping for students include facilitating the following:
- Aligns instruction with desired learning outcomes
- Encourages reflective practice
- Improves program coherence
- Improves communication among faculty members
- Increases the likelihood that students achieve program-level outcomes
Connect College Programs and Careers With Watermark
Ready to streamline your curriculum strategy and demonstrate the connection between college and career? Watermark software allows students to see their workload throughout their college experience. This knowledge helps them focus on career readiness skills based on their academic trajectory and learning outcomes.
About the Author
More Content by Watermark Insights
