Explain the need to collect and assess school and community data when developing curriculum.

Describe types of standardized tests used to collect student data.

Select the most appropriate, reliable, and valid pre-made instrument needed to collect school and community data.

Explore state and federal student and labor data reporting systems.

Create a student questionnaire to collect current needs of the student population.

In order to make curriculum decisions, decision making committees and individuals must have information about the school and community.

Student needs should be considered in making these decisions. The collection of data to answer questions at the school level is called "internal" scanning. Questions that should be asked about students include: Who would be interested in taking the course, will there be enough students interested in taking the course, what are their interests and abilities, did past graduates pursue related careers, and can we project future enrollments? After we determine what we need to know about students, then we should consider how we will find out this information. Is there a pre-made instrument or will we have to develop our own? Has someone already collected this information?

Community needs should also be considered when making these curriculum development decisions. When asking questions about the community we are conducting an "external" scan. Questions that should be asked about the community include: What are the goals of the community, what are current sources of employment, what are the projected employment needs?

In this lesson, we will review these questions and how to collect data related to each. We will then consider the use of standardized instruments to collect data, the use of data already collected by county, state and federal agencies and how to create your own instrument if no other data or instruments exist. Be thinking about what instruments you could use to justify the development of the curriculum project you will begin developing this week.

View this week's Powerpoint that summarizes internal and external scanning of school and community data. Or click here to download it.

Explore the Buros Mental Measurement Yearbook. This resource lists and summarizes thousands of standardized tests that could be used to collect data about student interest and ability. Check out the sample review and look for the validity and reliability information this resource can provide. If you ever want to use this resource for free, most universities have a hard copy in their library. This is a great way of determining the validity of career assessments that seem to be everywhere these days.

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction collects data to meet the North Carolina Standards of Workforce Development Education. This data is collected at the county level and reported to the state. NCDPI also uses a lot of this data to report to federal standards. Examine post graduation Workforce Development Education VEISS data from the Department of Public Instruction. Password: Guest, Guest.

Explore USDA data and research briefings that could be used in external scanning.

Read tips on questionnaire design sponsored by the Texas Extension Service.

Explore these various sites that provide external demographic data that would be useful in curriculum development. Review the labor projection formula in figure 5-5 on page 112 of your textbook. You will find that this is not an easy task because labor data related to agriculture is often categorized very broadly.

Phase II:
30 pts

Due Oct.23 by midnight

Read Chapter 4 and 5 in our text Curriculum Development in Vocational and Technical Education by Finch and Crunkilton.

Project assignment: This week you will complete Phase II of the final project. You are to develop a school or community questionnaire that could be used in the internal or external scanning data collection process (discussed last week). Review last week's site and the publication from Texas A&M "Questionnaire Design Asking Questions with a Purpose". Follow the guidelines in this publication to develop a 10-20 item questionnaire that would be appropriate to administer to future students of the course or future employers of the program. This questionnaire should be related to the course you selected to develop last week. E-mail your assignment to bwilson@ncsu.edu as yourlastnamephase2.