Integrating IT Skills in Law, Public Safety, Corrections, and Security Career Programs
The National Partnership and the Education Development Center offers an in-depth set of materials to help instructors integrate information technology skills into LPSCS courses. The whole set contains a hard copy of the teaching guide and another booklet containing a series of problem-based scenarios and related teaching materials. These interface with a web-based library of resources of the IT Across Careers (ITAC) Project that includes student guides.
The set, used as a whole instructional system, helps instructors engage and motivate their students’ development of basic IT user skills proficiency using authentic problem-based scenarios that seamlessly integrate IT and Law, Public safety, Corrections and Security (LPSCS) program content. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the IT Across Careers (ITAC) Project helps students develop and apply their IT skills to real work problems encountered in LPSCS careers.
The Instructor guide also helps instructors customize ITAC materials for their LPSCS courses using ITAC tools and resources.
The two ITAC resources featured in the “Integrating IT Skills” booklet are IT in Action statements and problem-based scenarios for Law, Public Safety, Corrections, and Security (LPSCS). The IT in Action statements illustrate the many ways IT core applications are used in the different LPSCS careers and connect the learner to the real world of work. The scenarios integrate authentic LPSCS workplace job duties and tasks with the use of different IT core applications and provide a deep learning opportunity of different kinds of skills. As a skills building piece, each scenario contains information about the specifics of the work task, including what IT application will be utilized, a definition of the work task(s) to be performed, and the scope of the finished product. The IT components of the scenarios are aligned to the IT Across Careers Rubrics to Assess Basic IT User Skills.
The IT in Action statements and scenarios for LPSCS were designed to be used with the ITAC IT Core Lesson Templates which contain all the lesson components and information related to the IT tasks of the lesson. The ITAC core lesson templates are available on the IT Across Careers Web site at http://www2.edc.org/itacrosscareers.
The instructor guide, then, provides the details and suggestions as to how to make the best use of the resources available, both in print and on the web. The Guide contains:
- I---A Content Summary: “Integrating IT Skills”………………………1
- II---Teaching Procedures………………………………………………………4
- III---Web Based Support and Resources…………………………………7
- IV---Developing a Lesson Plan: An Example……………………………9
- V---The Student Guide: An Example……………………………………1-20
Information technology (IT) skills are essential for today’s careers in Law, Public Safety, Corrections, and Security (LPSCS), and the challenge for educators is how to create a learning environment that enables students to develop a solid grounding of basic IT core skills while training for a broad spectrum of LPSCS careers, especially at our community and technical colleges.
The ITAC scenarios for LPSCS can also be used as a starting place for class discussion about the different problems people need to solve in the workplace, for career exploration to learn about what people do in different work settings and the different sets of skills needed, and for class group projects or extra credit homework assignments,
Problem-based scenarios are an effective teaching tool for reinforcing skill development and learning. The ITAC scenarios and IT in Action statements for LPSCS provide a foundation for mastery of basic IT skills and a platform for students and learners to develop higher levels of thinking and critical reasoning through the experience of real-world work problems and solving them just as they are done on the job in today’s work environment.
