Self Paced Learning Module

Ramona Anand

Tool kit for recruitment of middle school students in Welding

December 8, 2009

Learning Context

This self paced learning module is about Weld –Ed (National Center for Welding

Education and Training) located in Lorain County Community College, Elyria, Ohio.

This module is designed for students of middle school. This module will help the students to understand Weld-Ed, its vision, mission and goals. It also discusses the significance and the impact of welding and materials joining especially to the young minds who are in the stage to deicide a career for themselves. This module gives information about the various aspects of welding such as the history of welding followed by the careers and pay scales in welding. It also gives an insight about the wages that are available as per the

United States Department of labor. Welding is important for the economy of any developed or developing country. The infrastructure for the growth and progress of any country is based on the construction, and renovation of the country. Welding is of significance importance to U.S economy as it is anticipated by American Welding

Society that in the next five years demand of welders will exceed the supply by 200,000.

Weld-Ed being a national center funded by a four year grant of five million dollars from

National Science Foundation is striving to overcome this shortage and build a career pipeline of new comers to this field.

The presentation developed in this module will be hosted under resources tab on Weld-

Ed website and will be used by Weld-Ed regional centers for building career pipeline. Students can use asynchronous learning and go through the module as per their convenience.

Overview of Learning Module

This learning module is designed to reach the level of understanding of pre teen agers about Weld-Ed. The learning module is designed using colorful pictures videos. The goal is to discuss the vision mission and goals of weld-ed and discuss the basics of welding.

The module further discusses the career choices followed by opportunities and employment growth in welding.

Content Outline

1. Understand Weld-Ed and its vision, mission and goals.

2. Accomplishments of Weld-Ed

3. Concept of welding

4. Careers in welding

5. History of welding

6. Job placements

7. National Long term outlook

8. Pay scales

9. Modern trends in welding

10. Associations in welding

Before you get started This module is designed for the middle school students to give them exposure about a very technical field in materials joining. Students can use the power point presentation hosted on the Weld-Ed website and finally test their learning by taking the quiz. The recent trends in welding are shown as a video that was first created in

Soviet Union.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the module, the learner will be able to understand Weld-Ed vision, mission and goals followed by career opportunities and pay scales in welding. The module also gives information about the associations with welding.

Key Concepts and Terms

There will be an acute demand of welders in the near future. The effort is to uplift the image of welding.

Commonly used terms are:

Filler metal

Welding rod

Electrode

Weld joints

Cutter

Solder

Braze Technician

Learning Activities

The learners are assigned information using the power point presentation. The

learners are tested by using a quiz and its gives feed back about their grasping of the

subject matter.

Objectives

After completing the module the learner will be able to:

A) Understand Weld-Ed vision, mission, goals and accomplishments.

B) Careers in welding

C) Opportunities in welding

D) Associations with welding

E) Pay scales

F) Employment growth

G) History of welding

Reading assignment

The module in the form of power point presentation, that gives the detailed information.

Quiz is scheduled at the end of the module. This is one time accessible quiz. The quiz is in the form of fill in the blanks. Learning Module

As discussed earlier the above module, the learner is in its very adolescent stage and is yet to decide a career for himself. The learner is not exposed to the various career openings available and is yet to make up his mind about his livelihood.

The learner will have to access this power point presentation to get information on the subject matter. They will be given exposure so that they can make up their minds for selection of career.

The presentation can be accessed as below:

Lorain County Community College by – Ramona Anand

The students will work on the homework and can discuss among each other about the subject matter. Feedback on understanding of the subject matter will be given by students, by attempting the quiz. Weld-Ed website will be used for hosting the subject matter in form of presentation. Quiz

Total points 5 X 10 = 50

Duration – 1 hour

Topic – Tool kit for recruitment of middle school students in welding

Name ______

Date______

1. Weld-Ed is a joint partnership between educational institutions,

______and government sector.

2. Weld-Ed is located in ______

3. Welding is the common way of ______joining of ______parts.

4. Because of its ______welding is used in materials joining.

5. ______can be a career for artists.

6. Traces of welding were first found in ______

7. Welding careers include Engineer, ______, supervisor etc.

8. Employment growth for Welding engineers is ____%.

9. Average wage for Welding Engineers is ______

10. Example of modern trends in welding is ______

Rubric for quiz: the rubric below will be used to test the learner’s knowledge. Rubric for grading quiz

Criteria Scoring scale

Answers to fill up the blanks 5 4 3 2 1 0

(correct answer 5, incorrect answer 0)

Question not attempted 0

Rubric for Home work

Requirements Scores Feedback comments Home work fully attempted, answered all questions 10 5 0 10 – answers are to the point and reflect through understanding of the concept, 5- answers are somewhat correct and the concept is somewhat clear, 0 – incorrect answers Use of language for expression 2 1 0 2 – clear expression with no spelling and grammatical errors, 1-Somewhat clear expression and some errors 0 – totally unclear expression Style of writing 3 1 0 3-Name, date, module number, Written clearly 1- Name , date written and module missing 0- Only name written Timely submission 5, Late by a day 4, Late by 2 days 3, and 5 4 3 Late further 2 2

100 – 90 A grade

89 – 80 B grade

79 – 70 C grade

69 – 60 D grade

59 – less Fail References www.weld-ed.org

US Department of Labor statistics

American Welding Society

Society of manufacturing engineers

Canadian welding bureau

American Society for testing and materials

Laser institute of America

Federation of materials society

National Associations of manufacturers

Auto steel organization

Edison Welding Institute and Navy Joining center

National resource for global standards

Steel net

The welding industry reports by JBS

Designing and developing web – based learning by Wang and Gearhart (2006)

Critique for the project

Learning Context and overall design

The topic “Tool kit for recruitment of students in welding” is chosen, as I work as Project

Manger for Weld-Ed (National center for welding education and training) located at

Lorain county community college. This project is funded by a 5 million grant from National Science Foundation. It is anticipated that in near future there can be huge demand of welders, thus, the center is working to add to the number of welding technician. Due to the increase in construction and infrastructure there will be huge demand of welding and materials joining technicians. As more than half of the existing work force is due for retirement, there is a lot of work to be done to abridge the demands of the industry. In addition, despite of all the existing advancement of welding, that includes automation, robotics, laser, and plastic weld etc. Welding is still considered as blacksmith’s trade. The perception of the trade is not right in lay mans minds. The counselors, who are considered as the gate, pass holders to higher education admissions are to be given knowledge about this particular field of industry.

The scenario is United States is going that bad, in certain parts of Southern United States, the students are pulled away by the industry after their first year in community college.

Once the students get minimal learning on the subject, the industries hire them. There will be a significant amount of growth in the field of alternative energy, which includes

Wind Turbines in this region and Nuclear Power Plants in Texas. As per the statistics from U. S Department of Labor, this will lead to huge demand of welding technicians.

Field like, biomedical, agriculture, construction, heavy duty manufacturing etc are looking for skilled welding technicians.

In order to meet with the current needs, workforce is being trained in the ships itself, while individuals are shipped to U.S. from the countries like Philippines. Weld-Ed in collaboration with American Welding Society ahs taken a huge initiative to work on this area and to develop and upgrade the curriculum. The learning module created, gives students information about the careers in the trade and tries to uplift the image of welding.

In this module, I have targeted the students of middle school for the reason that before the students even makes up their minds for selection of a career. I would like to inform them about his unique career and the valuable contribution that they can make, in addition, to earning long term employment.

Learner Access and activities

The learners may get information from the power point presentation developed. Hand outs will also be gives to the learners. This module will be hosted on www.weld-ed.org, under the tab, resources. Visual aids like video presentation of one of the newest technology in welding are also shown to accommodate the visual learners. The learners can adopt asynchronous learning and learn at their own pace.

Selection of media and technology

Multimedia will be used for the presentation and will be available on line at the Weld-Ed website.

Technology to use

World Wide Web will be used to host the module.

Materials assessment

The materials will be assessed by the giving the learners access to the quiz. Quiz along with rubric is also attached in the former part of the paper. Apart from this, learning will be assessed on a regular basis, by class discussions in the class and regular feedback on the homework submitted by the learners. Resources and References used for the module are collected from various sources, including, books, print media, and survey reports etc.

Learner/learner & learner/instructor & learner/content interrelation

Apart from the regular content teaching in the class the learning may be categorized as below:

Learner/learner: The learners will be engaged in group discussions facilitated by the instructor. Learners will be given an opportunity to discuss the subject matter among them. They will also critique on each other’s understanding of the subject matter.

Learner/instructor: Learner gets to interact with the instructor and discuss the content of the subject. In addition to this the learner submits regular home assignment for the instructor to evaluate the learning and give feedback for improvement. The quiz taken by the learner also helps the instructor to get a clear understanding of the learners learning of the subject matter. Accordingly, the instructor gets a chance to give feedback and enhance the learning of the learner about the weaknesses shown in the quiz.

Learner/content interrelation: The learner gets chance to analyze the subject matter on its own, when it comes to asynchronous learning. In addition, the interesting colors and pictures used in developing the subject content help to enhance the level of understanding of the learner.

Learning assessment

Learning assessment is given at the end of the module that comprises if quiz and the rubric for grading the quiz is also available for the learner.