Creating Industry-Validated Curriculum & Individualized Career Pathways at TSTC

SkillsEngine supports TSTC's mission of placing more Texans in high paying jobs by providing tools and services to enable the deployment of competency-based curricula and career pathways.

Texas State Technical College (TSTC), in part of its longstanding mission and commitment to creating industry-aligned career pathways, is transitioning all programs from a defined two-year pathway, to a competency- and mastery-based performance model, which enables a student to move through curriculum at the speed of their own mastery. 

To achieve this goal, TSTC utilized Calibrate, a software tool by SkillsEngine, to realign and rebuild competency-centered curriculum with industry-validated insights, in a matter of months. 

After reverse engineering what skills are needed for each job title and industry with external subject matter experts, TSTC created competency profiles in Calibrate, with anywhere between 100 to 400+ itemized skills requirements needed to succeed in a job. Employers rated these competencies on a scale from irrelevant to highly critical directly within the platform, which offered real-time feedback to instructional designers and faculty - and unprecedented speed and efficiency in rebuilding curriculum. 

Thanks to Calibrate, courses within a career progression are now matched to certifications and stackable credentials, so a student has full visibility into which competencies lead to which titles, certifications, and projected earnings. Additionally, each competency is rated by mastery of 80% or higher to pass the assessment, rather than traditional testing, enabling the chance to achieve full mastery in a timeline specific to each student, rather than based upon a traditional number of semesters. 

Calibrate has also offered TSTC and employer partners an opportunity for continuous and on-going review of curriculum, so competencies can be adjusted in the real-time, based upon changing workforce demands.

“In close collaboration with SkillsEngine, TSTC has moved from ideation to deployment of competency-based curricula and career pathways for a myriad of roles in a matter of months, resulting in an unseen opportunity to offer students a customized, transparent, and mastery-driven educational outcome,” 
‍
Katie Robinson
Executive Director of Career Pathways, 
Texas State Technical College (TSTC)