Developing Competency-based, Industry-driven Manufacturing Education in the USA: Bringing together Industry, Government and Education Sectors

In recent years, the U.S. has been experiencing a shift in technical and professional education. Industry, education and government stakeholders are redefining their partnerships and working together to create competency-based, industry-driven education at the local, state, and national levels. These form the fundamental principles of a paradigm shift in education needed to combine and enhance innovative educational approaches from different research fields, as well as best-practice models from other countries. This paradigm shift presents a challenge, as education and public sectors are typically not familiar with matured (project) management principles, and often follow the “Garbage Can- Model”(Cohen, 1964), while, simultaneously, industry experts lack experience and knowledge about the academic and public world. But both have to answer questions like: How can PM measure progress in an educational project? Which PM methods are most/least helpful? Using a case study approach to the research, this paper will analyze several highly visible and innovative stakeholder partnerships that are breaking traditional curriculum and assessment models. Using industry subject matter experts, both the Michigan Advanced Technician Training (MAT2) program have developed a competency- based curriculum that incorporates a sophisticated methodology of assessments using the industry-driven DACUM approach as the foundation. The new model requires a sophisticated methodology for tracking learning analytics including performance, completion rates, and learning gaps. This paper will propose a solution.