The Detroit Manufacturing Bridge

The primary goal of the Bridge Educational Project is to assist the educationally disadvantaged underemployed worker to become employed in advanced technology manufacturing firms with relevant job entry skills as well as potential for career development. This requires an educational foundation made up of occupational and academic skills targeted for technologically advanced manufacturing firms looking for career-oriented workers. Unique in this approach is the goal of continuous occupational skills improvement and the corresponding job advancement increasingly available in these firms.

The multiple stages of occupationally directed skills development begins with employability skills training (Pre-Bridge) and the corresponding unskilled entry-level wage employment opportunities available in manufacturing. At the next level the Technological Learning Skills Bridge (the Bridge) becomes the first rung in the ladder of technological skills development and manufacturing career advancement. Despite the brevity of the Bridge program, wages increase significantly upon completion of the first educational rung as marketable skill sets are developed. Further along the ladder individual career paths will emerge, requiring skills and occupational specialization. Formal certification such as vocational certificates and community college associate degrees eventually become the personal goals of worker students. This process of occupational skills advancement is dependent upon early utilization and increasingly mastery of complex learning skills which are first introduced and practiced in the Bridge.

This notion of an occupational wage and educational skills ladder is predicated on the growing trend in the manufacturing industry of linking specific occupational skills to hiring, wage and advancement. Multiple skills standard projects have been quantifying these evolving skill sets. In most of these projects it has been recognized that a profound change has indeed occurred in lower-level technological occupations over the last decade.

“Rather than simply carrying out specific tasks and following instructions, workers are expected to solve problems, seek ways to improve the methods that they use, and engage actively with their coworkers. This change therefore involves a new type of behavior and orientation toward the job ... we refer to this as the professionalization of the production (workforce).”¹

While this change had been predicted for more than thirty years it has been within the last decade that it has been recognized as commonplace. During interviews with manufacturing employers in Detroit and Chicago, human resource managers shared organizational tools they use to map the development of specific skill sets of their production and low-level technical workforce which are directly related to increases in wages and/or higher job classifications. Many employers stated that the tight labor market and increasing the use of new manufacturing systems the need to find incentives for productive employees to stay with the company, including the emergence of skills recognition systems that result in wage and career advancement. In the 1997 NAM/Grant Thornton LLP Survey of the American Manufacturing Workforce, 88% of manufacturers report a shortage of qualified workers in at least one job “category.” Also, “This shortage has gotten progressively more severe over time since the 1991 survey.”²

But are more educationally qualified candidates now seeking these positions? Within the Big Three automotive companies apprentice representatives do report an increase in the educational level of candidates applying for positions in the skilled trades. Manufacturers, however, have not necessarily raised their educational requirements for job applicants. In many cases the opposite may be true.

The 1998 report, “Good Paying Occupations: A Study of Occupational Wages in the Great Lakes States” by the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations of the University of Michigan, multiple technical occupations in and out of manufacturing were found to be available for candidates with less than a bachelor’s degree. These jobs were full time and paid $30,000 or more annually. “There are a wide variety of good paying occupations that do not require a four year degree. These opportunities are available to younger workers. The common characteristic ... is the need for training beyond high school. These occupations require advanced skills learned on-the-job, in apprenticeship programs, and/or at community colleges or technical schools.”³ With some assurance that technical jobs in manufacturing have evolved requiring more sophisticated skill sets, and that a significant labor market need exists for those candidates with training beyond high school, the next question becomes on what skill sets the curriculum should focus.

In researching the skills to be developed in the Bridge curriculum we ought to address the concerns of all the stakeholders in the project. The stakeholders include advanced manufacturing employers, community organizations with access to the target underemployed population in the Hispanic communities of Detroit and Chicago, labor advocates, public employment agency staff and community college and university educators. The following lists emerged.

To develop a basic manufacturing skill set, the functional skill outcomes described by employers were compared to other data on manufacturing-related work- based education and training efforts; namely, to the training topic areas selected by manufacturers through a Michigan-based economic development job training grant program conducted over the last several years. This skill set includes basic blueprint interpretation, basic precision measuring skills, quality manufacturing principles and basic statistical process control, industrial safety awareness including electrical safety, and industrial computer applications including Windows-based tools with MS Office most commonly selected. Beyond these specific skills were more generally described skills of on-the-job communication, team or group work skills, understanding of basic manufacturing processes and refining thinking processes such as inferring, categorizing, hypothesizing, generalizing, recalling, synthesizing and valuing, all within the context of work.

These meetings identified and sought to overcome the barriers to technology-based education for community residents.

Program models which do not take into account the entire context of learner/earner development, employer needs, and community infrastructure for access to and support of the target population, often end up contributing to the disconnect between education, adult learners and employers. These programs typically prepare participants to move up one economic rung, from temporary unemployment to narrowly focused entry level employment. But lacking the foundation learning skills or the career development perspective to continue an ascent of the job skills/career ladders, these new employees typically do not pursue further education or training, yet further job-specific training and academic study are fast becoming necessary even to gain a solid footing at the entry level, let alone higher levels of advanced technology occupations.

Community based employment training programs rarely offer a skills development advancement strategy beyond narrowly focused job skills with little potential for related follow-up educational development. Pre-employment training programs conducted through public/private training agencies create a working knowledge of specific job skills but see the employees: further learning needs, even those required for job advancement, is lying outside their scope. And in the employer-sponsored training arena, skills training which is job-specific is not intended to meet a broader goal of personal and professional development. Developing the skills and potential for lifelong learning is seen as the responsibility of public education and not private business.

With the decision that the Bridge and Pre-Bridge programs would function as a coordinated multi-organizational effort between community-based institutions and educational service providers several strategic roles emerged. Each organization would function as a partner in program implementation during the pilot and development periods, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities for each. The community organization would function as the lead community contact for the recruitment of participants. Educational service delivery would be split between educational activities at a community site and at the community college. Further, ongoing contact with potential employers would provide opportunities for occupational exposure through job shadowing, site visits, and possibly cooperative educational placements. The manufacturing workplace(s) would be integrated to the Bridge experience. There, students would go to gather more information and see classroom skills and concepts at work in industry.

Meetings with faculty and the multi-organizational team were convened to discuss the findings that would shape the curriculum. One set of review meetings was particularly important. The voice of future students emerged through meetings held with the staff of the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation. In these meetings of up to 18 DHDC staff, the majority of whom were local community residents between the ages of 18 and 30, the initial curricular elements were presented. These staff members collectively assessed the proposed curricular guidelines and plans.

In these meetings future students were described as family and community members with concerns. On a personal level were concerns about what real opportunities existed in light of the very real barriers that many participants would bring: less than positive past school experiences, inadequate job skills training, questionable learning skills especially in the area of mathematics, and an overall reluctance towards institutional educational experiences. At the broadest level were questions about how a short-term educational experience could possibly provide a meaningful entry to technology-based higher education.

Many of these questions were addressed through discussions of the variety of possible classroom and workplace experiences as well as the types of technologies with which students might work upon completion of the program. The group listened closely and questioned intensively to evaluate if students would be receiving high-quality job-relevant instruction by competent professionals using industry-standard tools. A recognition of the need to engage each and every participant through multiple and diverse learning activities and experiences helped the group to arrive at the consensus that the program had the basic elements for success, which they defined in terms of meaningful technology exposure, ongoing learning skills development and new awareness of career potential. Also, and possibly most importantly, these reactions and perspectives helped to shape these program areas which address students’ personal development.

In considering the design of the curriculum the staff of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) worked with community college faculty from academic and occupational education programs at Henry Ford Community College (HFCC), and with The Workplace Education Unit at Wayne State University’s School of Education, and with staff from the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation in Southwest Detroit. There were also meetings with the Chicago partners: University of Illinois at Chicago, Great Cities Institute; John Daly Community College, Chicago; and Instituto del Progresso Latino. As curricular issues evolved, HFCC faculty shaped scenarios and elements that could become curricular components. These ideas were discussed in the larger project group and through this process the curriculum took shape. As a part of the research, various manufacturing-based technical training tools as well as delivery models were reviewed. These included multiple curriculum and modules from the Advanced Integrated Manufacturing Center, National Center of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing Education, Sinclair Community College (AIM Center).

Meetings were convened in Detroit and Chicago with manufacturing employers, employer organization representatives, engineering educators, public employment agencies including the Advanced Technology Education committee of the Detroit Workforce Development Board, community-based educators, labor advocates, and faculty from across HFCC. From these meetings the guidelines of the Bridge curriculum as well as the dimensions of its instructional approach were defined as shown below.

Occupationally based manufacturing technology skill sets should be selected as the central focus of the curriculum. Technical areas include: Print Reading, Manufacturing Processes, Industrial Electrical Awareness, Quality Manufacturing Principles, Industrial Safety Awareness.

Math instruction should pursue a dual goal of developing general mathematical ability and specific shop math skills. Math-based challenges should be infused throughout the curriculum to encourage the development of mathematical problem-solving skills and mathematical confidence.

The organizational culture of manufacturing should be an important dimension of the Bridge. It should be explored to familiarize students with the technological, organizational, and current management notions of how businesses operate, and should prepare them for the expectations of the advanced technology workplace.

The material should reinforce and develop techniques for lifelong learning. These skills and techniques should help equip students with basic “learning tools” such as reading for comprehension, note-taking, effective writing, sketching, using computer-based learning aids and presenting ideas orally and in writing. The curriculum should encourage students to develop an awareness of the process and experience of learning through activities such as keeping journals for reflection, collecting technical information accurately, and summarizing things learned.

Entry-level and early career stage manufacturing jobs should be explored as well as the personal experience of industrial work. Processes for career development as well as the dimensions of the technology-based manufacturing work experience should be explored through case studies, guest speakers and literary selections.

Education and training in the context of lifelong learning should be analyzed as a way to achieve specific career or work objectives.

Process

Group intellectual work and the experience of approaching learning as a team should be practiced.

Computers are used in the workplace extensively and this should be reflected in their use in the classroom.

Learning skills development needs to occur through the use of multiple instructional and learning tools. Diagnostic assessment should be performed at the onset of the program to serve as a basis for the development of individual learning plans.

The curriculum should follow the instructional path of emphasizing learning by doing, assessing understanding, and building student competence and confidence through performance or successful creation of a product. Continual instructor feedback recognizing each student’s ability to learn and improve should be built into the model.

To the extent possible, content should be focus on problems and situations that resemble those encountered in the advanced technology workplace: goal- and problem-focused, team-oriented, and technology-reliant.

Use of the workplace as a learning tool should be significant. Structured learning experiences in advanced technology should be provided through field trips, job shadowing and internships and/or cooperative education arrangements.

Outcomes

The Bridges’ diverse learning experiences should converge upon well-defined student competencies, with clear objectives and guidelines for what students must do to demonstrate levels of mastery. Competencies should be defined in two arenas, the work skills arena and the learning skills arena. A portfolio or record of each student’s achievement should be compiled. These portfolios should help document a student’s capabilities should be usable by employers. They should also help students build pride through demonstrable achievements. The program should also create an environment of skills development and success to enhance participant motivation for further education and personal professional development.

Based upon the above guidelines a series of discussions were held where an interdisciplinary curricular model began to evolve amongst the faculty. Technology faculty with experience in holistic approaches to technology education came forward. Academic faculty with particular interests in applied math, workplace communication, and the exploration of the humanities seen through the context of work were recruited from across Henry Ford Community College. Materials were selected, instructional plans defined and a draft of the curriculum was laid out.

Pilot Programs Refine Curricular Model

With these draft materials in hand and the interdisciplinary instructional team organized, it was decided to conduct pilot programs of the Bridge. The Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation (DHDC) had been meeting with groups of potential community residents. Staff changes at DHDC interrupted the recruitment process and only in the eleventh hour was a group identified. The first of two pilots got underway in May of 1999 and concluded in September 1999. The second pilot began the in September and concluded in February, 2000. During the first two weeks of the first pilot the group stabilized at nine individuals. All had prior work experience and no post-secondary education. Midway through the pilot program weekly meetings of the project stakeholders began. These meetings provided an opportunity to reflect upon the necessary inter-organizational coordination and services of participants in the program. These findings were summarized by the Wayne State University partner and are reflected in the tools they developed for the project.

Over the first pilot, faculty worked to create an interdisciplinary model. Many class sessions began as technology instructional modules but through interaction of the technical faculty, the academic faculty and the students something new would evolve. Technological content would remain the core, but other activities and learning processes were infused into these areas, bringing the technical content and the use of other curricular skills together. For example, a lecture on the fundamental rules governing industrial safety in the workplace became part of a series of sessions which challenged students to define strategies and solutions for classroom and local community structural safety issues. In the end, research problems were defined, data were electronically recorded, group problem-solving skills were practiced and electronic memos were generated, all utilizing the basic safety principles. These types of activities served to reinforce the basic technical content.

The pilot programs generated the enthusiasm of students and the faculty alike. By the second pilot students would often get to the classroom well ahead of class. The students’ skills assessment tests had been analyzed at the community college and a work plan combining computer and paper based learning activities had been defined in their learning skills profile. The Community-Based Educator (CBE) assisted participants with work in this area prior to class. The CBE talked with participants about issues inside of and outside of class. Where relevant, these issues became topics of discussion amongst the stakeholder group and helped to shape the curriculum and the instructional approach.

The curriculum that emerged over the two pilots embodies those learning experiences or processes that help students to develop personal mastery in an area most effectively. Technological skills development was basic as it was primarily concerned with building a solid foundation or framework for future development in work-based technology. No one job or occupation was identified as an archetype for advanced manufacturing occupations.

From past experience-rooted in thousands of hours of customized technical work-based educational projects, the curricular team knew that those skills which would be perceived as most useful by employers and participants alike were those that most clearly mirrored the skills being used on the job. A comprehensive approach to skills definition was required. For example, teaching the skill of simply completing data input on a control chart yields a fairly low level of skill and competence. The contemporary and more accurate functional description of control charting by production employees includes data input as well as analyzing data, recognizing trends and out-of-control situations, determining causality independently or as part of a group, possibly retooling, and participating in department or system-wide continuous improvement planning. This expanded functional description of control charting takes into account multiple thinking and communicating skills. To most effectively develop those and other skills, as well as to reinforce the core theoretical technology the curriculum infuses technological topics with academic tools and processes. The “professionalization” of the production work force described earlier is in large measure defined in terms of skills that emanate from the academic arena; the physical sciences, effective communications and multiple types of applied cognitive skills, for example. As stated by Bailey and Merritt in their study entitled, “Industry Skill Standards and Education Reform”, “ The changing nature of work is the functional basis for synthesizing work and academic training”⁴

Research Supporting the Bridge Model

The infusion of academic practices into occupational education programs has been discussed in many studies in the field of vocational education for more than a decade⁵. Many concerned with educational reform propose it, as well as educational practitioners seeking more effective ways to actively engage students in learning. In the 1990 study concerning cognition in vocational education by Sue E. Berryman entitled “Solutions” from the National Council on Vocational Education, five assumptions about learning - all wrong - are described. All of the wrong assumptions treat learning in a passive sterilized context. The five errors Ms. Berryman describes are as follows:

1. People predictably transfer learning .

2. Learners are seen as passive vessels into which knowledge is poured.

3. Learning is the strengthening of bonds between stimuli and the correct response.

4. Learners are blank slates on which knowledge is inscribed.

5. To be transferable to new situations, skills and knowledge should be acquired independent of their contexts of use.⁶

While this presentation will not allow for a thorough discussion of these ideas it is important to note that the Bridge model relies on instructional methods that are in harmony with the findings of Berryman and others:

1. Active engagement of the learner in the instructional process.

2. Recognition and development of the learner’s framework of the topic or area.

3. Development of content and activities that allow the learner new ideas in multiple problem-solving learning situations.

4. Framing of content in real-world or work-world contexts that replicate as closely as possible what the learner can expect to encounter on the job.

In the summary section of the “Five Assumptions” Ms. Berryman states,” As we look at the five mistakes that we make in teaching and learning, it’s no wonder that we find no predictable transfer to new situations. Knowledge and procedures not initially well learned and understood will not transfer appropriately to new situations. In a passive learning regime, students do not gain control over their learning, let alone over what is to be learned. The ideas that they bring to the learning situation are not made accessible to them for re-examination. They are asked to learn in de-contextualized and fragmented ways that destroy sense-making.“⁷

This summary resonated with the perspective of the curriculum development team. Participants who entered the Bridge with few good educational experiences would be halfway to failure if the program attempted to utilize the same old “pour and store” strategies of education. The active learning strategies piloted by the faculty provided ample opportunity for re-examination of ideas in multiple contexts resulting in more profound experiences in stronger and more meaningful cognition. The journals created, the drawings recorded, and all of the students’ computer documents, memoranda and reports, the group projects, the finished and working multimeters, the flags of welded metal, the mastery-based certifications provided by faculty in technical areas, and the drafted career development plan - all speak to the tremendous positive impact the Bridge had on participants.

he Bridge is a partnership of organizations with distinct roles and responsibilities. It is fair for our partners, community organizations, educational institutions, employers and public agencies to ask if we have prepared participants adequately for the targeted occupations. Where Bridge pilot participants have moved toward manufacturing employment the answer coming back seems to be affirmative. Bridge participants with no past experience in manufacturing are being hired and are holding down jobs in manufacturing. Many are contacting the College and asking about the next rung of the Bridge ladder.

The Detroit Manufacturing Bridge is a technology-based learning framework. As a framework it can be adapted to different local labor markets and technological contexts. At Henry Ford Community College we are replicating this framework into other areas of technology education. Currently we are working on a program for Allie Health Bridge program. Technological skill sets are being determined for entry-level employment and the ACT Work Keys Assessment tools will be used to determine participants’ levels of proficiency in other complementary skill areas. An interdisciplinary team of academic and occupational faculty are formulating a curriculum with Bridge project staff and hospital staff. Indications so far are good that the Bridge framework can be applied just as effectively to prepare student-workers for careers in medical technology as in manufacturing technology.

We look forward to sharing this framework and curriculum with other colleges, community colleges and technical education institutions.

1. Bailey, T. & Merritt, D. (1997) Industry Skill Standards and Educational Reform, American Journal of Education, 105, The University of Chicago

2. National Alliance of Manufacturing/Grant Thornton LLP Survey of the American Manufacturing Workforce (1997)

3. Good Paying Occupations: A Study of Occupational Wages in the Great Lakes States, (1998) The Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Michigan

4. McGrath, D., & Spear, M.B. (1991) . The Academic Crisis of the Community College. Albany, NY: SUNY Press

5. Bailey, T. & Merritt, D. (1997) Industry Skill Standards and Educational Reform, American Journal of Education, 105, The University of Chicago (Page 405)