IMTfolio

Project title: Expanding Career Pathways for People with Disabilities in the Industrial Manufacturing Technician Registered Apprenticeship Program

Timeline: 2019-2020

Funder: Office of Disability Employment Policy, U.S. Department of Labor

Budget: $40,000

My role: Design lead

Many jobs in advanced manufacturing require a written test as part of the hiring process. Those tests can screen out capable employees who struggle with traditional test-taking methods.

IMTfolio is a digital portfolio designed to support pre-apprentices pursuing industrial manufacturing technician (IMT) careers - giving them another way to show that they're qualified for the job.

Trainers create challenges that guide pre-apprentices to document real-world evidence of their competencies using photos and videos. The result is a multimedia portfolio showcasing an applicant performing the specific skills needed for employment.

The team discusses the STEMfolio application and its adaptations to other learning environments including IMTfolio, for advanced manufacturing pathways

The vast majority of pre-apprentice trainers in advanced manufacturing are industry professionals, sharing their first-hand knowledge and experience with the next generation of workers. It's less common for a trainer to have a background as an educator.

The success of IMTfolio hinges on trainers creating targeted, goal-oriented prompts that guide pre-apprentices to demonstrate and capture critical skills. Early on in development, we discovered the existing workflow was creating a barrier for trainers. To improve outcomes for pre-apprentices using IMTfolio, we first needed to better support trainers to develop high-quality challenges in the application.

How might we...

Support industrial manufacturing pre-apprenticeship trainers using IMTfolio to author achievable and measurable challenges tied to specific competencies

in order to...

Improve the quality of responses produced by pre-apprentices

1. Maintain the brevity and simplicity trainers appreciated about the format

2. Relocate the competency selection function to increase its salience in the workflow

3. Build in multiple examples for reference

4. Rewrite the mircocopy to address the confusions trainers identified

The revised form prompts trainers to target specific competencies first and provides further clarification on their purpose in IMTfolio

Trainers can access additional support around writing effective learning goals

The use of video is encouraged to provide pre-apprentices with multiple ways to engage with information

I traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to meet with participants in our pilot. After presenting an onboarding session, I conducted one-on-one interviews with four trainers. I learned that speed and simplicity were the most important factors that would impact their adoption of the tool.

With those findings in mind, we designed the trainer side to be a short, straightforward form - minimizing the steps involved to create a challenge.

In early testing, trainers reported appreciating the brevity of the form so we proceeded with the design.

After an initial period of use, we analyzed the challenges and responses created by users. We became concerned that pre-apprentices were not concretely tying the skills they demonstrated to a particular competency.

We hypothesized that a major reason for this was the way the challenges were constructed - many were overly broad and generalized. They did not prompt pre-apprentices to explain their thinking specifically enough.

In the original design, trainers were expected to write the prompt for each challenge first - without an effective way to self-assess its quality.

My first revision to the challenge-authoring form was reordering its steps. Instead of selecting competencies at the end of the process, trainers would choose them first, then write their prompt by directly referring to the competencies they chose. This simple change gave trainers a structure that produced more reliable results.

We also surmised that offering more assistance to trainers seeking clarification and examples while writing challenges would benefit both trainers and pre-apprentices. To provide this, we included just-in-time support at each stage of the authoring process. By keeping this content short and scannable, we hoped to strike a balance between brevity and utility.