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Experiential Learning Activities: Engage Your Future Workforce

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Connecting with your future workforce through tangible experiences is a great way to build relationships and cultivate student interest in the career fields that are important to your company. It’s also a great way to give young people a sense of what the workplace is like and to get them engaged in their career development. For example, experiences like internships are becoming an important part of resumes when it comes to landing a good job. The earlier students can get those experiences the better. Students from middle school through technical college have access to Inspire so you can interact with students at any place on that continuum.

In Inspire Madison Region’s first year, we facilitated nearly 60 Experiential Learning Activities requested by educators and students and fulfilled by the employers who offered them – everything from guest speakers, career fairs, job shadows, internships and more. With many more schools coming on board with Inspire in the 2016-17 school year, we anticipate seeing many more ELAs being set-up through Inspire.

Here are two ways that you can engage your future workforce by adding ELAs to your profile.

  • Offer Experiential Learning Activities (ELAs) to students in middle school, high school and college from our Experiential Learning Continuum. Choose from over 30 ELA options from categories like career awareness, exploration, preparation and training. It’s also a great way to form relationships with students (who may become your future employees) and educators. To activate ELAs in your profile, click on “Experiential Learning Activities” and then select from the options listed, OR….
  • Get Creative. List customized ELAs with specific details. If your company or organization offers or would like to offer activities with specific details, you can add those in Inspire by clicking on “Experiential Learning Activities” and then “View Participation”. Then click on “Add New Opportunity” and add details like name, specific contact information, locations, dates, time commitment, compensation, deadlines, details, qualifications and instructions. This is a great way to target specific schools, age groups, or students in certain career pathways or programs. It’s also a great way to limit the number of requests you get for popular programs like job shadowing.

As always, if your company feels at any time that you are at capacity for any of the ELAs you’ve signed up for, you can easily uncheck them from your list and they wont’ show up anymore to students and educators.

Teachers: New to Inspire? Get started here.

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We want all educators with access to Inspire Madison Region to know what this business-education network offers. If you’re new to Inspire, here’s a basic overview:

Inspire Madison Region (currently available in Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Green, Iowa, Jefferson and Sauk Counties) helps educators and their students easily find local employers and career coaches willing to connect with them to help build our future workforce. Educators and students in participating schools can access Inspire through an additional tab in Career Cruising.

Through the Inspire features, you can find and request Experiential Learning Activities (ELAs) such as teacher externships, job shadows, guest speakers and youth apprenticeships offered by employers in our region. It is also a resource for your students to get a better idea of the careers available in the Madison Region and the employers who offer those careers. Students can also connect with locally or regionally-based online career coaches who answer their questions about various careers in a secure environment.

To access Inspire Madison Region, first log in to your Career Cruising Administrator account: http://careercruising.com/school

If you don’t have a Career Cruising account, talk with your school administrators to get one set up. Once logged in, proceed to the Inspire Madison Region features located at the left side navigation on your account.

  1. Search for Companies: Allows you to search for companies in your area by keyword, index, cluster, industry. You can then further filter your search by city. Viewing a company’s profile will display details about the company, a list of careers offered by the company and a list of Experiential Learning Activities (ELA) provided by the company with a mechanism to request an ELA as an educator or on behalf of a student. Please reference the Experiential Learning Continuum for a full list of the types of ELAs available.
  1. Search for Experiential Learning Activities: Allows you to search for ELAs available in your area by industry and ELA type such as job shadow, guest speaker or youth apprenticeship. Then you can sort further by proximity, city, or ELA type. From there, you can submit a request to the ELA provider for yourself or on behalf of a student, setting requested times and dates and adding details about what you or the student would like to accomplish. Follow this guide for more information on the ELA request process.
  • Manage ELA Requests: Allows you view and manage ELA requests made by you or the students at your school, if you are assigned as an advisor or work-based learning coordinator. Follow this guide for more information on the ELA request process.
  • Inspire Madison Region Messages: Allows you to view the system-generated messages when your ELA request status changes, and to view messages sent to you from employers on career-related topics or from Inspire administrators.

In order to see the student-facing side of Inspire/Career Cruising, click on”Enter Career Cruising” on the bottom of the left navigation.

For more information on how to use Inspire, please reference the following materials or contact us below:

Educator ELA Guide
Student Quickstart Guide
Contact us here.

Summer Updates – Educators

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Inspire Madison Region is all about making connections. With the help of our education, business, and community-based partners, those connections have grown over the summer months as new employers and career coaches join the network. Several new school districts have also joined or are set to join after we build a critical mass of participating employers from their respective communities. In addition to new school districts coming on board, Blackhawk Technical College has also joined Inspire putting us at two participating technical colleges.

By utilizing Inspire Madison Region in your classroom, you help students in the Madison Region improve their understanding of the labor market the steps needed to pursue careers in many industries. You can also access the many Experiential Learning Activities (ELAs) offered by employers using the system as well as the database of employers and career coaches.

Below are some current highlights on the Inspire Madison Region initiative:

  • 580 Experiential Learning Activities (ELAs) offered to students, educators and job seekers
  • 147 Online Career Coaches answering questions from Inspire users
  • 133 Employers with profiles highlighting their business
  • 15 active districts/educational institutions with a total of 34 active school sites: Madison Metropolitan School District, McFarland School District, Deerfield School District, Mt. Horeb School District, Cambridge School District, Baraboo School District, River Valley High School, Highland High School, Monroe School District, Beaver Dam School District, Columbus School District, Madison College, Blackhawk Technical College (Monroe Campus), Dane County Job Center, Jefferson County Job Center.
  • 22,986 active student portfolios in the seven county region and nearly 1,000 educators with active accounts to get access to Inspire.

Industry Highlights – Number of employers with profiles in the top eight focus industries in our region:

  • Advanced manufacturing = 45 employers
  • Healthcare = 35 employers
  • Life Sciences = 40 employers
  • IT = 48 employers
  • Construction = 41 employers
  • Agriculture = 33 employers
  • Finance = 33 employers
  • Real Estate = 5 employers (Attention: Real Estate companies 🙂

Interactions through Inspire to date:

  • Career Coach Message Boards: 159 interactions between September 2015 and May 6th, 2016
  • Experiential Learning Activities: At least 50 experiential learning activities completed between September 2015 and May 6th, 2016

Other updates:

Beyond the excellent progress on the Inspire metrics, there’s also been a change in leadership. In April 2016, Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP) assumed the managerial role for Inspire Madison Region, bringing with it new opportunities for partnerships between post-secondary institutions, school districts, employers, government agencies and community-based organizations.

Inspire’s geography is also growing. Grant, Lafayette, Crawford and Richland Counties are joining through the leadership at Prosperity Southwest Wisconsin. That will make Inspire Madison Region an 11 county implementation, one of the largest Inspire networks in the nation!

There is still a lot to accomplish to take Inspire to the next level. In the coming months, many more school districts from across the region will be joining the initiative – and we hope yours is one of them. If it’s not, please feel free to contact us to set up a time to meet about your school/district joining.

Inspire Makes it Easier Than Ever to Connect with Employers

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The Madison Region has a unique opportunity to gather data on the number and type of Experiential Learning Activities taking place throughout our region because of the reporting capabilities of the Career Cruising system that powers Inspire. That’s why we’re excited that Career Cruising has rolled out a new streamlined ELA request process that will make it easier for educators and business volunteers to track ELA requests starting in the upcoming academic year.

The ELA process has gone from five steps to as few as two, encouraging educators to complete requests from within their Career Cruising CAMS portals. By doing this, each confirmed ELA is recorded in the system. This is critical to measuring the number and impact of the ELAs taking place throughout the year. We hope that in the future it will also help us improve how we deliver ELAs to students, educators and job seekers in our seven-(soon-to-be-11)-county region.

In the past, a student or educator often submitted a request through Career Cruising/Inspire but the ELA coordinator or educator at the school would confirm the date and time with the employer outside of Career Cruising. Those ELAs then are not tracked as completed. So we are asking all educators who utilize Inspire to complete ELA requests within Career Cruising using this new shorter process.

What follows is a table that shows the steps involved in requesting an ELA or managing a request made by a student. Note: although there are five steps listed, there are places along the way where the process can be completed before that, making the process shorter:

Step Action ELA Request Status
1 Student or Educator searches and selects a Experiential Learning Activity (ELA). They will then view the ELA description and make a request using the online form. NOTE: The ELA company contact will automatically receive an email notification once the request has been submitted. Requested (student) or
Pending volunteer approval (educator)
2 Skip this step if you made the ELA request yourself. If you are the ELA coordinator for your school and Step 1 was completed by a student, check with volunteer about ELA request details such as time and place or confirm if you have already done so. You can do this from CAMS in Manage ELA Requests section. If you and the volunteer agree upon date and time for the ELA, you may confirm the request now and the process is complete. Check with Volunteer or
Confirm
3 Once the company contact (provider) accepts the request, get in touch with the provider directly by email or phone to discuss details such as date, time, or number of participants. At this point, if the details are agreed upon, you may enter those details, then confirm the request and the process is complete. Or, you may propose a new time for the ELA and wait for confirmation from the volunteer. Confirmed or
Propose New Time
4 Waiting for confirmation from volunteer once they’ve received the proposed dates and times. Pending Confirmation
5 The ELA request is complete when the provider confirms the details that you entered. Confirmed

ELA process

In addition to the streamlined ELA request process for educators and volunteers, schools can now set a student’s advisor to receive ELA requests notifications along with the school’s or district’s ELA coordinator.

Below are some additional materials that describe how to manage your educator Career Cruising account (CAMS) and the new updates to the ELA request process.

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/3048643752697527044

http://inspiremadisonregion.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/EducatorELAGuide_08.16.16.pdf

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Inspire Madison Region brings together businesses, schools, community organizations and volunteers to create a vibrant workforce in the Greater Madison Region. Communities in Dane, Columbia, Dodge, Green, Iowa, Jefferson and Sauk Counties have the opportunity to build bridges between employers and secondary and post-secondary schools across the … Join Now and Get Involved!

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