Reducing Barriers to IT Technician Education

The demand for skilled Information Technology (IT) technicians in Texas is high, with a projected increase through 2030 of 13% for East Texas and 21% throughout the state. Kilgore College (KC) will address the need for skilled entry-level IT technicians in rural East Texas and surrounding regions by improving retention, completion, and the employability of students enrolled in the Computer Information Technology (CIT) program. The goal of this project is to develop a wraparound solution for reducing barriers to program completion for students in East Texas that will be responsive to student challenges such as employment, family obligations, and living away from campus. Digital badging will be used to motivate students by documenting their short-term successes and providing rewards along the way. The project team will align the curriculum with the needs of local industry by conducting a series of workshops, with industry partners, resulting in the articulation of a required set of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) for each of the two sub-disciplines within the CIT program. The resulting curriculum will be designed to be deployed using multi-modality instruction, allowing students to attend in-person, remotely, or asynchronously online. The project will evaluate student support systems, including supplemental instruction, mentoring, coaching, and lab management for multi-modality courses to ensure that students complete the program and gain employment. This work will contribute to the body of knowledge supporting multi-modality instruction in technical programs. The resulting curriculum model can be replicated in rural community colleges nationwide. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the Nation's economy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.