Expanding the National Center for Welding Education

Lorain County Community College, Elyria OH

Investigators

Abstract

This project is supporting Weld-Ed, a national partnership between the welding and materials joining industry and the nation's community and technical colleges and universities, transitioning to an ATE Resource Center for welding technician education. As an ATE Resource Center, Weld-Ed is continuing to support the role and pipeline of welding technicians in industry. Weld-Ed is achieving this goal by: offering a comprehensive welding professional development program for high school teachers, community college and university faculty members, continuing to advance welding technology programs nationally, providing technical assistance consulting to welding programs nationally, and developing a certification program for high school and community college welding technology programs to support improved programs of study with a focus on continuous process improvement. The comprehensive formative and summative evaluation plan includes two project evaluators. Together, they will craft the evaluation design and specifics, develop/adapt the needed instrumentation, and manage data security and analyses. The internal evaluator will be responsible for data collection, analysis, and writing formative evaluation reports. The external evaluator will be responsible for the overall evaluation. The External Evaluator will review data collected, documents and work products, and will use a protocol to interview staff, customers, students, and partners. The Formative Evaluation will focus on implementation and progress. The implementation evaluation will track whether the project is being conducted as planned. Progress evaluation will determine to what extent the project's goals and objectives are being met. Qualitative and quantitative data will be collected using a mixed-methods approach (Stevens, et. al. 1992) (Frechtling and Sharp 1997). The external evaluator will ensure objectivity and manage the overall summative evaluation. The summative evaluation will address the following questions: 'Was the project successful?' 'Did the project meet the overall goal?' 'What components were most effective?' 'Were the results worth the project's cost?' and 'Is the project replicable and transportable?' The project has four primary objectives. Objective 1 is to offer a comprehensive welding professional development program for high school teachers, community college and university faculty members. Success will be measured by faculty use of instructional materials and number of individuals participating, and the degree of implementation of curricular improvements on the campuses. Objective 2 is to develop a certification program for high school and community college welding technology programs. Success will be measured by the number of schools participating and the institutionalization of programs. Objective 3 is to advance welding technology programs nationally. Success will be measured by the number of students involved in outreach activities, andthe number of students enrolled in and graduating from welding programs. Objective 4 is to provide technical assistance consulting to welding programs nationally. Success would be measured by the number of consulting engagements, numbers of programs reached, courses changed, and students impacted. This project addresses the welding industry, which is experiencing single digit job growth and double digit retirement and attrition of welders and welding technicians. Weld-Ed partners with industry including: American Welding Society, Lockheed Martin, Lincoln Electric, plus 154 industry affiliates, and high school, 2-year and 4-year institutions. The instructional materials and research reports being developed and distributed by the project reach thousands of educational institutions and tens of thousands of students annually. The State of Welding Industry Report is a publication of the project which is distributed nationally. There are significant efforts to attract underrepresented populations.