Step 3: Cross-walk your Curriculum to the IT Skill Standards
If you are aligning an already existing curriculum to the
IT skill standards, typically you first need to determine how your curriculum maps to the skill standards. You need to
develop a Curriculum Crosswalk and discover which standards are covered by your curriculum and which are not.
Have a copy of your course or program description in front of you.
Generate the report. Like the Market Analysis activity, you have two options:
Once you have your login and password, open the CMAT.
Click on Curriculum Crosswalk in the Create New Reports menu at page left.
Fill out user information.
Click "Next" and follow the directions through the wizard, choosing Key Activities, Skills and Knowledge focused on in your course. Rate the chosen Skills and Knowledge as "Important", "Somewhat Important", or "Not Important".
After clicking finish, you will see your formatted report.
Your report will be stored in the Curriculum Crosswalk Catalog of the CMAT. To save your report to your local machine, click "File, Save as...."
To see some existing reports, view the Online Report in the sample section on the left of this page or visit the CMAT Curriculum Crosswalk Catalog.
PAPER-BASED: Use the NWCET publication, Building a Foundation for Tomorrow, Skill Standards for Information Technology to create your curriculum crosswalk. A copy of this book may be purchased via the NWCET website.
Locate the career cluster that applies to the course you are analyzing.
Make a copy of the skills data for that cluster. This will be the mark-up copy for your report.
Go through the data, choosing Key Activities, Skills and Knowledge focused on in your course. Rate the chosen Skills and Knowledge as "Important", "Somewhat Important", or "Not Important".
The marked up career cluster copy or online report is your Curriculum Crosswalk.
Uncover the consistencies and the gaps between your curriculum and market needs: Go to Step 4!
Q: What's a curriculum crosswalk?
A: A matrix that maps the learning outcomes of your course or program to the technical knowledge and employability skills identified in the IT skill standards. The curriculum crosswalk is usually compared to the results of a market analysis in order to identify matches and gaps.
Q: When should I do a curriculum crosswalk?
A: You can do one anytime. But, it's probably easiest to do a crosswalk after you've already done your market analysis. The market analysis helps you to understand the skill standards on a detailed level and helps you to understand clearly what industry is talking about when they mention specific skills or knowledge. Once you have this understanding, you can do a more accurate curriculum crosswalk.
Q: Can I check the skill standards coverage of a textbook or pre-packaged curriculum by using the crosswalk tool?
A: Yes. It's a good idea to do this if you want to ensure that the textbook you're using covers the skills and knowledge industry emphasizes. Typically you will find that textbooks do not cover some of the skills industry has identified as essential while they cover others industry has identified as peripheral. Pre-packaged curriculum tends to be strong in technical skills and weak in soft skills.
Q: How long will it take me to do a crosswalk?
A: It depends on the chunk of curriculum you're focusing on, but a single course can take an hour. A textbook can take as long as 3 hours and an entire program can take as much as a day.
